


Adrian Mellon and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (ft. the Losers)

by theappleppielifestyle



Category: IT (2019)
Genre: Adrian Mellon Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Everybody Lives, Fix-It, M/M, Stanley Uris Lives, The Turtle CAN Help Us (IT), except georgie! georgie is still dead. RIP georgie, some of them die but they come back it's all good, sorry lil dude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23044291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: Mike tries to clap him on the shoulder. His hand goes right through.“Oh, yeah,” Adrian says, voice shaking as Mike’s face falls. “I’mhelladead. Hey Mr. Hanlon, you know anyone called Richard Tozier?”(Or, Adrian comes back as a ghost to deliver Richie a message. To say he's unhappy about it would be an understatement.)
Relationships: Don Hagarty/Adrian Mellon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 273
Kudos: 1224





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the [original post](https://skinks.tumblr.com/post/610989280039501824/adrian-mellon-comes-back-as-a-really-really) that inspired this fic!
> 
> Everyone go spam OP with love!

Adrian dies.

It’s a blur. First it’s a blur of shoes coming at him. Most of them are assholes that were in his year back in high school until they dropped out, and then there’s some kid who probably isn’t even  _ in  _ high school yet. Don is screaming his name and the world is hazy, bright with pain that’s getting deeper, dangerously deep. The kind you can’t come back from.

Adrian keeps smiling, jagged smiles that go more jagged the more blood gets in his teeth, right until he goes over the bridge railing. No matter how bad he’s hurt, he’s not about to let those fuckers have the last laugh.

That goes out of his brain as soon as he hits the water. It’s not deep, he could stand up in it easily, but everything hurts and it takes everything he has just to reach out and grab the hand that’s being held out towards him. It’s not until he’s hauled to his feet, blood running into his eyes, that he sees the hand he’s grabbed is clad in a clown glove. And then he sees the clown it’s attached to.

Don is still screaming. Not too far away, something is splashing towards him. Calling Adrian’s name. It’s gotta be Don, but Adrian doesn’t turn to check yet. He can’t.

Instead, Adrian stares up at the clown. It smiles, and in its smile is every fucking thing Adrian has ever been afraid of, rot and shame and guilt and  _ Derry _ , and he can feel his face pull into a humiliating mask of fear, because something’s wrong, something’s deep-down wrong, deeper than what Adrian assumes is his own internal organs bleeding into places they shouldn’t -

“ADRIAN,” Don screams. Like he’d been screaming while Adrian got the shit kicked out of him on the bridge just now, but also back in high school. And middle school. And elementary school. They have a long history, Adrian and beatings - he never could shut up, even as a kid. Always had to have that last word.

Adrian and Don have a long history, too. Almost as long as the beatings. The first time they met, they were six years old and Don came up screaming to where Adrian was getting a mediocre ass-kicking from some kids in his class. Don had yelled at them and threatened to throw an empty beer bottle at them, and after the assholes left, sniggering at them, Don had helped Adrian up.

_ I don’t know why they’re so mean _ , Don had said. He’d always been upset at how mean people could be. And surprised. No matter what happened some part of him was always surprised, like he expected better.

Adrian has never expected better. 

Just before he dies, he thinks of Don, six years old and frowning at the cruelty of schoolboys.

Then he turns to  _ his  _ Don, who is 26 and walking through the river towards him. Adrian’s eyes are wide. He’s still thinking of Don, age six, and Don, age 26, the two images blurring into one when his arm is wrenched up.

Then he dies.

It’s not immediate. 

It takes five seconds, maybe, of bleeding out from the bite. 

The goddamn hogfucking  _ bite _ , because the thing,  _ whatever  _ it was, takes a bite out of his armpit. Out of  _ him _ . 

Adrian stops thinking of Don at age six, or age 26, or at all. He blocks everything out, mostly. He screams, but in a distant way. His throat works at it, but his brain is miles from the violence, out beyond this shithole town, out into the atmosphere. He’s imagined this so many times while he grew up in Derry, when he was getting beaten up or mocked or whispered about. Before jeering at them, before lashing out with words or fists, for just a second - he’ll tune out. He’ll disappear. He’s not here. He’s not -

Don screams with him and that makes it harder to be elsewhere, but not impossible. Adrian doesn’t tune back in and the thing continues to consume. He doesn’t think about what it’s eating. He doesn’t think about anything at all. He closes his eyes, still screaming. He doesn’t think about being far away. 

He thinks of nothing at all, and then he’s -

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Nowhere.    


When Adrian opens his eyes, there’s no pain. There’s no anything, actually, which is worrying. He’s standing in a white, endless space and he can’t feel anything.

He holds up his hands, digs his fingernails into his palms, but there’s not any sensation. He can see his nails dig in, but there’s not even any pressure.

“If this is hell,” he says, and it comes out smooth, free of blood, “it  _ sucks _ . I - I was promised drama. Flames. Some tall red guy poking me with his big stick.”

He swallows. It makes a noise. Does he still have spit, wherever he is? If so, he can’t feel it.

He opens his mouth again, and then screams.

There’s a turtle. It wasn’t there, and now it is. It’s huge, impossibly so, and it looks very old, but not because of anything physical. Adrian doesn’t know why he knows it’s old, but he does.

“What the fuck,” he says when he finishes screaming. “Are - what’s-”

HELLO, says the turtle. I AM MATURIN. I AM SORRY WE MUST MEET LIKE THIS.

“Oookay,” Adrian says. Absentmindedly, he looks down himself. He checks down his pants. Everything’s intact. 

“Like what,” he says, letting his waistband snap back against his skin. “Like - here? In wherever the fuck afterlife this is? I  _ am  _ dead, right?”

CURRENTLY? YES.

“Fuck,” Adrian says. “God. This is - this is gonna kill Don. Can I talk to him? Does-”

WE DO NOT HAVE MUCH TIME, says Maturin. I HAVE CALLED YOU HERE TO ASK YOU TO PASS ON A MESSAGE. 

“Uhhhh,” Adrian says. “You - okay? Sure? How do I do that. Wait,  _ fuck  _ that, who are you and where are we and - and can I talk to Don, answer that one first.”

YOU MIGHT, Maturin says. YOU WILL HAVE THE CHANCE, WHEN YOU GO BACK.

“Go back,” Adrian says. “Like, back to - Earth? The land of the living? What the fuck is going on here-”

WILL YOU PASS ON THIS MESSAGE?

Adrian makes a noise through his teeth.

“I don’t know, depends on what it is and what I get out of it! How about you tell me what’s going on, and maybe I’ll-”

YOU ARE DEAD.

“I know that! Thank you, turtle Jesus! Or whatever you are-”

I AM SENDING YOU BACK, says Maturin, TO DELIVER A MESSAGE. 

“Wh - tell me what the fuck is going on first,” Adrian yells. “Who are you? Where am I? How-”

WE DO NOT HAVE TIME, Maturin says. THE MESSAGE IS FOR A MAN CALLED RICHARD TOZIER.

The name’s familiar. Adrian doesn’t bother thinking about why that might be.

“What  _ message _ ,” Adrian yells. “Do I need a pen? Is there some grand reward-”

There’s something pulling at his ribcage. It’s noticeable, but only because there’s no other sensation in him, no breath or blood.

YOU MUST SHOW HIM, Maturin says. YOU MUST HELP HIM SEE.

“Wh-”

Adrian doesn’t get to finish the question. The pull at his ribcage intensifies into a yank, and then -

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


He’s back in Derry. In front of that piece of shit Inn, in the parking lot.

“What the fuck,” Adrian says, mostly on autopilot. He checks down himself - still no damage, but he still can’t feel any sensations. 

In front of him, someone says, “Adrian.”

Adrian looks up. 

“Hanlon the Hot Librarian,” he blurts.

Mike blinks. He laughs, looking shocked and overjoyed. He’s standing with a bunch of other people, none of whom Adrian has seen before, except maybe one guy who looks kind of familiar. 

“Guys,” Mike says. “This is Adrian Mellon! The guy who got killed just before I called-”

He starts walking up to Adrian, still grinning. “You got brought back too! I can’t believe-”

He tries to clap him on the shoulder. His hand goes right through.

“Oh, yeah,” Adrian says, voice shaking as Mike’s face falls. “I’m  _ hella  _ dead. Hey Mr. Hanlon, you know anyone called Richard Tozier?”

Mike turns. So does everyone else, except for the guy that looked familiar before, who now clicks into place in Adrian’s mind.   


He snaps his fingers. It makes a sound, which makes zero sense.

“Fucking  _ Trashmouth _ ,” he says. He walks straight through Mike, partly because he can and partly to make him jump, which he does.

“Sorry,” he says back to him. “Cold spot?”   


“Uh, no,” Mike says. “Just - weird.”

Adrian nods. Turns back to Richard - Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier, Jesus fucking shitballs - and marches up to him, stops maybe a foot away. Richie looks spooked, which is fair. He’s staring at a ghost, after all. He also looks greasy and tired and like his clothes need washing.

“Unbelievable,” Adrian says. “Out of all the guys I could get charged to deliver mail to, and it’s  _ this  _ jackass. Hi, jackass.”   


“Uh,” Richie says. “Hi? What’s - what’s the message?”

Adrian throws up his hands. “You know what, I’d love to give it to you. Apparently I’m gonna show you something.”

“Okay?” Richie’s still looking freaked out, but a lot less than he probably should be. More than anything, he seems nervous. “Hit me.”

Adrian laughs at him. Then, just for the fun of it, he claps his hands together and holds them at his forehead like Charles Xavier in Xmen. In front of him, Richie goes tense.

“Whoa,  _ hey _ ,” says a short, tightly-wound looking guy at his side. He has gauze on his face and what look like permanent worry lines. He smacks Richie in the shoulder. “You’re just - the guy’s a ghost, we don’t know what his deal is! What if it’s IT?”

“I don’t think it’s IT,” Richie says. He looks over at Mike, and so does everyone else. 

“You knew the guy,” says the short dude, sounding questioning.

Mike’s come over to the rest of the group by now. He also looks pretty tired.

“I did,” he says. “I - it seems like Adrian to me.”   


Adrian does a small pose, hands fluttering around his face. Mike laughs, like he always did when Adrian did it in middle school.

“We killed IT,” says the only girl in the group. She’s Adrian’s kind of girl, which is to say she doesn’t look like she puts up with anyone’s shit. Also, she’s a redhead.

Adrian gives Mike a look, raising his eyebrows. 

“Uh, IT - IT’s what-”

“IT killed you,” says the shortstack.

_ How long has it been, _ Adrian thinks. It feels both like a very long and a very short amount of time since he was at that fair getting the shit kicked out of him.

“The clown,” he says. “The - whatever it was.”   


“That’s the one,” Mike says quietly. 

“IT’s dead?”

“He’s d-dead,” says a guy to his left, who everyone proceeds to look at like they hang off his every word. “No one’s going to get hurt by him now.”

Adrian stares at him until he falters.

“Oh,” the guy says. “Sorry, I-”

Adrian ignores him. “Mike, how long’s it been?”

“Uh,” Mike says. “Three days.” 

Shit. “How’s Don doing?”

Mike blows out a breath. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, I haven’t been in touch-”

Adrian waves a hand. He didn’t really expect Hot Librarian to get in touch with Don, it was just in case.

“Nevermind, I’ll go find him myself,” he says.

“Who gave you the message,” shortstack asks.

Richie tilts his head, like  _ huh _ ,  _ should’ve thought of that _ . Shortstack makes a face at him that clearly means  _ dumbass _ .

“I don’t KNOW,” Adrian says. He yells a bit, because he fucking deserves it. “Some turtle Jesus appeared to me and said  _ hey, go hit up some shitty comedian, show him the light! _ Or something. He didn’t give any instructions, I don’t know what I’m supposed to show or how to show it-”

“Wait,” Richie says. “So what was the-”

He holds his fingers to his head, Professor X style. 

“-all about?”

“I don’t fucking  _ know _ ,” Adrian says. “I was being funny. Maybe it would’ve worked.”   


“What else did the turtle tell you,” the redhead asks.

Adrian stares at her. Takes a deep breath with no lungs.   


“Everybody,” he says, loud enough to ring across the parking lot, “is taking this all weirdly well, and no one seems that concerned about a GHOST appearing to give some dude a MESSAGE and you just killed some monster that ATE ME TO DEATH and did I mention I’m DEAD? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?”

“Adrian,” Mike says, but Adrian’s on a roll now, pacing the concrete, flinging his arms out, which everyone ducks away from even though they go straight through their bodies.

“SINCE WHEN IS HOT LIBRARIAN HANLON INVOLVED IN A MONSTER KILLING CONSPIRACY,” he screams. “WHO ARE ALL OF YOU PEOPLE! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS MESSAGE! MOST IMPORTANTLY, WHERE THE  _ FUCK  _ IS MY BOYFRIEND!”

He starts slapping Richie in the chest. It doesn’t do anything, since his hand goes through, but Richie goes tense again, even though he doesn’t move out of the way.   


“WHY - IS - MY - ETERNAL - SOUL,” Adrian yells, punctuating each word with a slap, “TASKED - WITH - HELPING - SOME - SEXIST - HOMOPHOBIC - ASSHOLE - WHO’S - PROBABLY - GLAD - I - GOT - HATECRIMED TO DEATH!”

He finishes with a kick to the dick, which also goes through Richie, right up into his stomach. Richie winces. He’s not the only one, but his is definitely the biggest. Adrian doesn’t blame him. Getting ghost-kicked in the dick must fire off some important neurons in the brain, even if nothing touches you.

He stalks off after he’s finished, but not far. He walks a few feet away from the group and then stops, hands on his hips, wishing he could cry. He died in  _ Derry _ . He never even got out. He died in the way he was always afraid of, and Don had to watch.

“I don’t write my own stuff.”

Adrian takes a second. Then he turns.

Richie is looking - something. More affected than he should be by the ghost dick-kicking.

“You say it,” Adrian says. “That’s not a huge vote of confidence in your basic humanity-”

“I don’t agree with it,” Richie says. 

Adrian snorts. “Yeah, dickhole, I can tell by how you can’t meet my eyes right now.”   


Richie sighs. His shoulders come up even tighter, and then he meets Adrian’s eyes.

“I’m not,” he says, and pauses. His jaw twitches. “That shouldn’t have happened to you. I’m sorry.”

Adrian raises his eyebrows. If the guy’s faking it, he’s better than his act would’ve suggested. His voice even wobbled near the end.

Richie clears his throat.

“You wouldn’t be the only one to come back to life lately,” he says. “Maybe that’s how it works. You show me the message, then get brought back to life.”

Adrian eyes him warily.   


“This is blatant manipulation,” he says.

Richie shrugs. “You got a better idea? Look, I’m not saying - ugh. So, you don’t - know how to show me the message?”

“Nope,” Adrian says. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go see my boyfriend.”

He walks off. He makes it to the end of the parking lot -

-and then reappears in front of the group again.

“FUCK YOU,” Adrian screams at the sky. He tries a second time, marching off, and just reappears back in the same place. 

Adrian swears at the sky again. Then he turns back to the group, who have been watching in bewildered silence. “Okay. Maybe I’ll - whatever. Looks like I’m stuck with you until I show you the fucking message. But I still want to talk to Don.”   


Richie looks over at Mike. “Hot Librarian Hanlon?”

Mike gives Richie a look that might have aimed for stern, but ruins it with a smile.

“I’ll find his number somewhere,” he says. “Or - Adrian, do you know it?”

“What is this, the 80s?”

That gets a laugh. Adrian clocks all these people around the same age, which means they were kids in the 80s. Probably knew each other’s landlines. Adrian knew Don’s landline number, way back when. 

“I’ll find it,” Mike says. He hovers his hand over Adrian’s shoulder, pats the air. “I’ll go home right now, look around. Uh. Does anyone want to stick with Adrian and tell him - fill him in?”

Everyone looks at each other.

“We’ll stay here,” says a tall guy who hasn’t spoken yet. He’s unbearably hot, partly because he’s conventionally attractive and partly because he both looks and sounds so goddamn -  _ earnest _ and  _ good _ .

“We can get new flights,” Hot Kind Guy continues. 

“Yeah, looks like business in Derry isn’t finished yet,” Richie says, sounding deeply regretful of that. Every time he looks at Adrian he gets this look on his face like he’s - haunted. Ha.

“The rest of you don’t have to stay,” Richie says. “I can stick around, you guys can go-”

“Shut up, Rich,” shortstack says. “Of course we’re staying.”

“You don’t have to,” Richie repeats. “I’ll tell you what the big message is when I get it. Come on, we all hate this shithole.”   


“Don’t call it a shithole,” Adrian says on autopilot, and they all look at him, surprised. 

Adrian relents. “I mean, yeah, Derry’s a steaming pile of pig shit, but you can only call it that if it’s  _ your  _ shithole.”

Richie snorts. So do the rest of the others, who trade looks like they’re sharing an inside joke.

“Yeah, well,” says shortstack, “before this was your shithole, it was  _ all  _ ours.”   


It’s news to Adrian. It’s not the most shocking news he gets in the next few hours. Not even close.


	2. Chapter 2

They go back to the Inn. They don’t book the rooms for more than one night, because for all they know, they’ll be out of here in a few hours, Adrian freshly alive and everyone free of their ghosts, metaphorical or otherwise.

Richie cancels his flight. He doesn’t book a new one. Too optimistic. Instead he resigns himself to a limbo in Derry, staying here until some poor gay ghost figures out how to give him a message from a turtle.

“Explain the turtle to me again,” Adrian says when they’ve managed a whole minute of silence.

It evokes a round of sighs.

“We’ve explained everything we know,” Bev says gently.

“You said, like, three things,” Adrian says, pacing through a bed that Bev, Ben and Bill are sitting on. None of them wince when he passes through them, though it had taken a few passes for them to quit flinching.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “That’s all we know. He’s not exactly a fountain of knowledge. He appears in our dreams, makes us forget him, and now there’s been the weird - IT magic, whatever, we remember him again. Sort of.”

“He never explained much to us,” Ben adds, sounding regretful, like he really does want to talk nicely about Mr. Turtle. Maturin, apparently. Richie never got the guy’s name in his dreams. He’d been surprised that Adrian managed to get that tidbit.

Richie looks at the door, where Mike is talking on the phone. He’d come back to the Inn after calling about eight people and finding someone with Don’s number. That call is going seriously overtime, though Richie supposes it’s hard to convince a guy of - whatever Mike is telling him. The truth might be too much, but what lie would be good enough? 

His phone vibrates. Richie checks it.

It’s Stan. In reply to Richie’s infodump, he’s replied: _ if this is a prank it’s not funny. If not, guess I’ll see when I get there. Boarding plane soon, turning phone off now. Give everyone my love. _   


“Stan sends his love,” Richie announces.

Everyone gives some semblance of a smile. Adrian flips him off, but absentmindedly. Richie doesn’t have the energy to be offended.

Richie clenches his phone. Stan had officially come back to life nine hours ago, and they’d gotten confirmation of it about eight hours ago. The resurrection had come in tandem with Eddie’s, bringing him gasping back to life, bloody but whole, as the Neibolt house was collapsing.

_ He’s fine, _ Richie had said.  _ Guys, he’s just hurt, I can’t leave him - _

They’d been pulling him away when Eddie had jerked awake, coughing.

_ What the fuck was that, _ Eddie had said.

A turtle, was what it was. Eddie had come awake in a white, endless space to find an impossible turtle floating in front of him, a turtle that was familiar in ways he didn’t remember until just then. A turtle who’d wanted to help, back in ‘89. A turtle who’d turned out to be pretty fucking useless in the end.

_ Could’ve told us how to kill IT back then,  _ Richie thinks as he turns his phone over in his hands. He looks up, watches Adrian pace through solid objects.  _ Could’ve brought this guy back from the dead properly instead of ghosting him. Hell, could’ve even told him what the message is he has to give me. What the fuck, turtle. _

He switches to watching Eddie. Eddie’s also pacing, but in another space of the room to Adrian. He’s in clean clothes and his face is pinched in worry and every time Richie looks at him his chest twists. 

Eddie had been fully dead, back in the cistern. Richie had known it even as he argued with the others, tried to cling to Eddie’s body. He’d known it and he’d been unable to know it, all at once. How do you accept something like that? He’d just gotten Eddie  _ back _ . 

As Richie watches, Eddie looks over. Richie starts to avert his eyes, as he’d always done when Eddie caught him watching him, but Eddie gives him a questioning look. 

Richie doesn’t know what it means, so he shrugs. 

“You’re wearing a hole in the floor,” he says.

Eddie flips him off. Richie glances over at Adrian, who is staring at each wall as he paces through the bed.

“Excuse me for being stressed,” Eddie says. “ _ I _ thought all this magic crap was over.  _ I  _ thought all I had to worry about now was divorcing my wife and finding a new place to live. Now we’re stuck in Derry waiting for a dead guy to give you a message.”

“You’re not stuck in Derry,” Richie says. “ _ I’m _ stuck in Derry. You’re perfectly free to go back to your soon-to-be ex wife and-”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says. He paces faster “None of us are leaving.”

Richie throws his hands up. “You obviously want to! Go if you want to do, nothing’s keeping you-”

“I don’t want to  _ go _ ,” Eddie says, all but snarling it. His shoulders sag. He quits pacing, stands there staring at Richie as Richie tries to force his heart back down his throat.

Ben says, “None of us are leaving without you, Rich. We’re happy to stay.”

Richie glares at him, but it’s hard to glare at Ben. Damn those earnest eyes.

“ _ I’m _ not happy to stay,” Adrian says. He’s standing in the middle of the bed, his side kind of in Bill’s arm. “ _ I _ want to fuck off and see my boyfriend, but apparently I’m stuck here with you old chucklefucks.”

“We’re not even 15 years older than you,” Richie says.

Adrian shrugs. “Okay, boomer.”

“We’re not  _ boomers _ ,” Richie says. “We’re - what are we?”

He looks around. Everyone stares back blankly.

“Well, we’re not boomers,” Richie says. 

“Generation X,” Bill says hesitantly. “Right?”

“It doesn’t  _ matter _ ,” Richie says. “Point is, we’re not boomers.”

Adrian, if anything, looks even less impressed.

“Okay, boomer,” he says.

“I can’t believe I’m stuck with you,” Richie tells him.

“Back at you,  _ bro _ ,” Adrian says, drawing out the words in the most annoying way possible.

He starts pacing again. Eddie’s already pacing in another space in the room. 

Richie watches them both, wanting to laugh but not quite knowing why, until the annoyance overtakes him and he says, “If one of you doesn't stop pacing I’m going to strangle someone.”

“Can’t strangle me,” Adrian sing-songs.

Richie looks at Eddie imploringly.

Eddie rolls his eyes, but comes and sits down next to Richie. Their knees bump along with their elbows.

“This is not how I expected this morning to go,” Eddie says.   


“Yeah,” Richie says, watching Adrian continue to pace through the bed. “Me neither, bud.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Mike comes in after another few minutes.

“Well, he’s a few towns over, staying with his aunt right now,” he says. “But he’ll be back as soon as he can.”   


Adrian’s eyes are bright. “What’d you tell him?”

He can’t talk to him. Or, his voice doesn’t work through the phone. Either way, Adrian hadn’t been able to have a conversation with him.

“I - told him that there’s unfinished business,” Mike said. “I didn’t get specific, which he was angry about. Deservedly so. I didn’t want to give him false hope, in case-”

He gestures at Adrian, who bobs his head.

“Yeah,” he says. “Might not get resurrected. Fab. Hey, what if he gets here and he can’t see me? Don couldn’t hear me on the phone. And that dude in the parking lot when we were coming in, he couldn’t see me. What if it’s only you guys?”

That’s met with silence. Richie looks over at Eddie, like _ what the hell do we say? _   


Eddie doesn’t have anything.

“We’ll see what happens,” Mike says, “and then go from there.”

“I wanna see Don,” Adrian says. He folds his arms tight. “I - I just wanna see Don.”   


“I know,” Mike says. “He’ll be here as soon as he can.”   


Adrian sniffs. Richie can’t look at him. He can’t look at Eddie anymore, either. He stares at the ceiling instead.

“I’m gonna go take a shit,” he says when nothing continues to happen.

It gets him a groan from at least two people, which is a win. Eddie swats at his leg as he walks into the bathroom attached to the bedroom.

He closes the door and then stands there. He’s just sat down on the closed toilet lid when Adrian appears, looking as surprised as Richie.

“Uh,” Richie says. “You mind?”

“Hey, I didn’t choose to blink here,” Adrian says. “I’ll gladly leave.”

He walks through the door. Or, he tries to. As soon as he does, he appears in front of Richie again.

“Oh, come ON,” Adrian yells.

From the bedroom, there’s a muffled call from Bev: “Uh, everything alright in there?”

“Going great,” Richie yells back. “Apparently we have to be in the same room, and I’m going to have the most uncomfortable bathroom experience of my life.”

Adrian scowls. Kicks ineffectually at the linoleum.

“You know,” he says, “Usually people have the toilet lid  _ up  _ to shit.”

“Shut up,” Richie tells him. “Just - shut up.”

He leans back, puts his head against the wall and closes his eyes. When he opens them, Adrian is sitting on the floor next to the toilet.

“I hate that it’s you,” he says. 

“Yeah,” Richie says. “I hate that it’s you, too.”

Then he hesitates. “Better than one of those kids, I guess. That’d be - even more depressing.”

Adrian is quiet for a moment. “Kids died? This time, I mean. This cycle, or whatever.”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “Two of them. Yesterday.”

“Oh,” Adrian says. “Jesus.”

Richie nods against the wall. 

“IT did it? Killed those kids?”

“Yep.”   


Adrian pulls his knees up to his chest. Wraps an arm around one of them. 

“Did they get resurrected,” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Richie says. “We haven’t, uh. Checked.”

Adrian gives him a scathing look.

“We’ll get to it,” Richie says.

“They’d better get resurrected,” Adrian says. “If two of you guys get another chance at life, those kids should  _ definitely  _ get one.”

Richie nods. He’s been trying not to think about the kids. Or, more accurately, they haven’t come to mind. He’s had a busy couple days, okay?   


“And me too,” Adrian says. He squeezes his hand in his jeans. “I deserve another chance. If you guys get one, so do I.”

“Yeah,” Richie says. He wants to say more - about how young Adrian is, maybe, or how he has a boyfriend who loves him, or how he should be allowed to get the fuck out of Derry. But it all lodges in his throat, and Adrian doesn’t seem like he’d appreciate Richie saying it anyway.

So Richie just nods and says, “We’ll do everything we can to get you back to life, man.”   


Adrian gives him another look. It’s less scathing this time. Mostly it’s tired. 

“You better,” he says. “Otherwise I’m haunting your ass.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


They sit there long enough that Eddie yells through the wall, “Are you getting performance anxiety, Rich, or did you eat something bad?”

“Yeah, your mother,” Richie yells back. “Quit listening in, you made it go back up.”

Eddie tells him to fuck himself. Richie grins.

“You’re both disgusting,” Adrian says. 

“Yeah, well,” Richie says, and then can’t come up with anything to follow it up with.

Adrian sighs. He unfolds his legs so they sprawl across the bathroom floor.

“Look,” he says. “Obviously Turtle Jesus thinks you need a telling off. Or whatever. So how about you tell me where you’ve gone wrong, and maybe that’ll kickstart the pixie dust.”

Richie blinks.

“Uh,” he says. “I don’t know where I - you - this feels like you’re telling me to tell you what the message is.”   


Adrian shrugs. Rolls his head towards Richie.

“I don’t know what it is,” Richie tries. “That’s the  _ point _ . I need to get  _ shown _ .”   


_ Please don’t be about the gay thing, _ he thinks.  _ Or the Eddie thing. Neither of those two things. Please, Maturin. Turtle Jesus. Ha. No, shut up, this kid’s not funny. _

Unfortunately, Richie can’t think of what else it might be. He’s dealt with his substance abuse issues, mostly. Those demons are 95% dealt with. 

“I thought you were refusing to give it up unless you get to see Don,” Richie says.

Adrian shrugs. Picks at his teeth with his creepy ghost fingers. They look like normal fingers, but not quite - his skin is transparent, but only if you squint.

“I want to know my options,” Adrian says. “I’m still not doing shit until I see Don, but, like. If this deal is that I show you and that unlocks my resurrection - great! So, if you could start throwing out hints of what the message  _ could  _ be-”

“Which you don’t know how to show me.”

“Which I don’t know how to show you,” Adrian admits, “But maybe we can - jog it. Come on, you geriatric fuck, it’s like you’re not even trying. What’s your damage? Damages, whatever. What in yourself do you need to fix, Scrooge?”

Richie laughs. It’s a thick noise in the back of his throat.

“I can’t believe this,” he says, muttering it into his hands. He scrubs his hands up his face, into his hair. God, he really needs to wash it. “Why is this happening to me, this is so dumb and weird. Why the fuck did you get dragged into this?”

Adrian shrugs. “Wrong place, wrong time. I don’t know. Got killed by something tied into your fucked up friend group. Popped back here. Fuck you guys, by the way.”

“Hey,” Richie says. “Would you rather just be dead? Or have this ghost peep show?”

Adrian is quiet for a moment. He crosses his arms.

“I don’t hear any suggestions on what about you warrants Turtle Jesus to appear and send me back from the dead to give you a message, Scroogie.”

“Scroogie,” Richie mutters, incredulous. He pushes his fingers into his closed eyes until colours burst on his eyelids. “I should’ve left as soon as we got out of the cistern. Just - got in a car and bolted. Who needs sleep? Or a shower? Or saying a heartfelt goodbye to your childhood friends, who-”

He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. There’s too much. He’s missed the people in the other room - and Stan, flying from Atlanta - more than he knew was possible. Something had been taken from him, and then it was returned after 30 years, and it was something fucking  _ crucial _ , something unbearable to be without. He’s missed these people like a limb. Many limbs. He’s been rolling around all his adult life with no limbs, just a torso and a head, wondering why things feel so off. 

Richie makes a face. No, bad analogy. And you can live without limbs, good lives, too. He’s missed these people like - organs. Big ones. Lungs and stomach and heart. And important shit, like veins and skin, and he’s just been gasping uselessly, blood sloshing everywhere, somehow still alive and walking around, but in a painful, bizarre existence. 

And now he can breathe again. And his blood is circulating, contained and easy, into one place, and everything is okay. Or, okay-er than it has been for a long, _long_ time.

“Hey,” Adrian says. He snaps his fingers.

Richie takes his face out of his hands.

“I hope you were brainstorming,” Adrian tells him.

Richie blows out a breath. Hello, lungs. 

“I can’t think of anything,” he says, low.

“What?”

“I can’t think of anything,” Richie says, louder but not looking at him. “Sorry.”

Adrian sighs. Kicks at the floor. His foot goes through it.

“Great,” he says. “So you’re dumb, too. Comforting.”

Richie takes a deep breath. Then he breathes it out.

“Look,” he says. “I get that you’re dead, and that probably sucks, and - and this is all really shitty. But could you  _ maybe  _ lay off giving me middle school flashbacks? You don’t have to be so-”

He waves a hand. Saying  _ mean  _ sounds pathetic.  _ Stop being so mean to meeeee! _   


“Nevermind,” Richie says. Then, in a moment of maturity: “Whatever, you’re dead and you don’t know if you’re coming back. Call me a dumb asshole however much you want, man.”   


“Wow, thanks for letting me,” Adrian says, voice thick with sarcasm

Richie can’t bring himself to hate him. He can’t even bring himself to dislike the guy. Adrian's being a dick, sure, but who wouldn’t be a dick in this situation?   


Also there’s that pesky self-identification. Richie can’t stop identifying with Adrian, no matter how much he’s trying not to think about it. From the ages of 11 to 16, when he left Derry and forgot about the place, Richie kind of thought he’d die by getting beaten to death. He tried not to think about that, either, but he’d still believe it in the vestiges of his mind, the dark parts he tried to stay away from. He wouldn’t tell anyone he was gay, but still - people would  _ know _ , somehow. Or Richie wouldn’t hide it enough. And they’d find him. And Richie would go into death curled up in a ball as guys kicked at him, awash with pain but also that sense of inevitability.  _ Of course it ended like this _ .

Richie wonders if Adrian thought that when he was on the ground getting kicked, before they dropped him into the river.

There’s a knock on the bathroom door.

“Occupied,” Richie and Adrian say in unison. 

“We’re thinking about going for lunch,” Mike says. “Do you guys want to come?”

“Fuck yes,” Adrian says, standing. “I’ll get a five course meal. Oh, wait! I can’t eat anything. ‘Cause I’m dead.”   


Richie sighs and pushes himself up off the toilet.

“We’re coming,” he says.


	3. Chapter 3

They get lunch at a shitty diner down the road. It had been there when the Losers were kids, and not much has changed since then. There’s a woman here who went to school with them. She’d started working there as a teenager, she’d served them when they started getting jobs and had money to spend on food. She’s still here, though she doesn’t seem to recognize them.

Richie’s kind of glad about it.

He gets eggs, like everyone else. Even Eddie gets eggs.

“Thought you were allergic,” Richie says.

“Yeah, well,” Eddie says. “Shut up.”

Richie snorts. “Another stunning comeback from Kasprak, ladies and gentlemen.”

Eddie flips him off. Richie does the same, using the wind-up trick that draws it out enough to get everyone looking.

“Someone put hot sauce on the eggs,” Adrian says. He’s pacing in the space next to the booth. “I can’t eat them but I need to live vicariously through someone. Richard, put hot sauce on your eggs.”

“He doesn’t like spicy food,” Eddie says.

Richie looks at him. “I like spicy food.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. He scratches at the skin next to his cheek bandage. “Well, when we were kids you were always eating it because we dared you, and if we didn’t you’d dare yourself. So you ate it a lot but you didn’t actually like it.”

Richie had forgotten.

“I don’t love it,” he says. “But I can - y’know, eat a mild Palak Paneer.”

“A _mild_ Palak Paneer?”

Richie starts spooning sugar into his coffee. “Yeah.”

“That’s not-” Eddie glares at the sugar bowl as Richie dips into it. “That’s not - spicy - Richie, we’re _forty_ , you can’t have five spoonfuls of sugar.”

“Maybe _you_ can’t,” Richie says. “Wait, seriously, you’re not? You literally came back from the dead, dude, you’re not going to go a little buckwild?”

At first Richie thinks he’s stepped over the line, because Eddie’s face goes tight, the kind that usually means Richie actually needs to apologize. It doesn’t happen much. Didn’t, anyway. It’s been a while since Richie’s been around to offend Eddie.

“I’m divorcing my wife,” Eddie says slowly. “I think that beats giving myself a fatty liver through reckless sugar consumption.”

 _My liver has bigger things to worry about than sugar_. Richie almost says it. But it feels like one thing too many to introduce his mostly-taken-care-of problem with alcohol, so he shuts up and drinks his coffee.

Eddie gives him a look like he’s surprised Richie didn’t say anything. He’s not the only one.

“We’re proud of you, Eddie,” Ben says.

Eddie ducks his head. It’s adorable. 

Richie stares down into his coffee. For once he’s glad Stan isn’t here. That fucker was always too perceptive. Richie’s 80% sure Stan knows he’s gay. Stan had said some stuff that made Richie sweat, back when they were teenagers - nothing outright, just implying enough that Richie would lie in bed at night turning it over in his head. 

Stan had also implied some stuff about Richie’s feelings for Eddie. Again, nothing big, but enough to send Richie into a fear spiral. 

_You like him best,_ Stan had said once, when they were both drunk at 16.

 _Aw, you’re still my favorite, Staniel,_ Richie had said. Slurred, probably. He was pretty out of it by then.

 _No_ , Stan had said, with those fucking knowing eyes. _You like him best. And that’s okay._

 _Uhhh,_ Richie had said. 

_It’s okay_ , Stan had said, quiet and understanding, the terrifying kind of understanding that made Richie immediately get up and leave the spare room back into the party. Then he’d challenged the biggest guy at school to do a keg stand. It gets fuzzy after that. Richie definitely got punched at some point, and threw up in a bush somewhere. Then Stan found him and got him home, walking him through the dark streets, cursing Richie for being so tall and so drunk as Stan hauled him up and tried to get him to walk in a straight line.

“I’m gonna go for a smoke,” Richie says. “Give me a yell when the food gets here.”

He gets a murmur of agreement, and Richie gets up. Adrian digs his heels into the floor, literally, but when Richie leaves the diner Adrian appears in front of him, looking just as frustrated with the situation as Richie feels.

“Give me one,” Adrian says when Richie shells out a cigarette.

Richie stares at him. Then he gets out another cigarette, lights it and holds it up a safe distance from Adrian’s mouth. Adrian leans in, but his lips go through.

“Worth a shot,” he says.

“Was it,” Richie says. He sucks on the lit cigarette, determinedly not thinking about ghost mouths. He’s not into Adrian, it’s just - impossible not to think about what Adrian’s done with that mouth. Which is weird and gross and hypocritical. Richie has also done many of those things with his mouth. Much less than Adrian has, probably, unless him and his boyfriend exclusively hooked up non-frequently in bar bathrooms.

The diner door opens and shuts. Adrian says, “Hey, Red.”

“Hey,” Bev says, coming to a stop next to Richie and leaning on the wall. “Can I get one?”

He gives her the one he got out first. He lights it, and she breathes in.

“Just like old times,” she says after blowing out smoke. She smiles.

Richie smiles back. He can’t not. She looks just as shattered as him. Moreso, even. But there’s something that’s in all of them now, and it wasn’t there when they got here: hope. It shines out of her eyes, timid but bright.

“Smoking buddies,” Richie says. He leans in and bumps the tips of their cigarettes together, an old ritual that had been erased with everything else. Bev joins in the bump, laughing out of the corner of her mouth.

“Smoking buddies,” she agrees. She leans back, takes the cigarette out. She still holds it the same as she did as a kid, sure and steady. “How did we never get caught?”

“Teachers didn’t give a shit,” Richie says. “Everyone knew about the smoking pit behind the bleachers. As long as it wasn’t weed-”

He shrugs. Takes another drag.

Bev says, “Does Derry High still have that? The smoking pit?”

“It’s alive and kicking,” Adrian says. He has his hand up, pinched around a nonexistent cigarette. He takes a suck of nothing, then adds, “I got beat up there once.”

Bev hums. She gestures at Richie. “Didn’t you get beat up there once, too?”

“Ah, memories,” Richie says. 

“What’d you do,” Adrian says. “Make a fat joke about the wrong kid?”

“Always,” Richie says. He flicks ash down at the street. “No, just. Teenage bullshit.”

Bev eyes him. It’s clear in her face that she remembers it. It was the usual shit, Richie running his mouth and getting called a fag, which made him shut up or run his mouth even more. Either way, he got punched after that. Usually there wasn’t a reason he got beat up, or there was some made up reason, but whatever happened, Richie got called a fag as he was getting punched. This didn’t happen to everyone, so Richie didn’t know what was so special about him. Other than, y’know. But no one _knew_ that, not for sure.

“The rest of us ditched to take you home,” she says.

Richie nods. “You’re welcome for the distraction. Got you out of Home Ec. Worth peeing blood for a few days, getting you out of Home Ec.”

Bev nods. Her gaze has gone distant. Has she ever peed blood, other than during that time of the month? Richie has heard of that, the pee going red during that time. Gross. But other times - she’s been gutpunched before. She mentioned it to him once, on the rare occasions when she talked about her Dad.

He glances down at her wrists. They’re still ringed in bruises, though they’re fading from bright red to a dull green. They’ll be gone in a few weeks.

“We were grateful for your sacrifice,” she says. “Getting us out of class.”

“It wasn’t an allowed absence,” Richie says. “You all got detention.”

“Yeah,” Bev says, shaking ash from her cigarette. She steps on the ash, rubs it into the concrete. “Still.”

She gives him another smile. There’s warmth there, cutting through whatever is going on in her head. 

From beside them, Adrian gives a noisy inhale. He breathes out nothing. Not even air.

 _Dead_ , Richie thinks. He suppresses a shudder. _Dead, dead, dead._ Eddie with empty eyes. Stan in a bath with a razorblade. Adrian getting another kick to the kidneys, a little blood in his urine -

“How’s the cigarette,” Richie says.

Adrian smacks his lips. It really shouldn’t make a sound, but none of this makes sense anyway, so whatever.

“Tastes good like a cigarette should,” Adrian says.

Richie snorts. Winston is still _the_ cigarette brand around here, it seems.

Adrian blows out a breath. Raises the nonexistant cigarette up again.

“This is such a weird fucking week,” Bev says.

“You can say that again,” Richie says. “And it’s not even over yet.”

Movement catches his eye. He looks over to find their booth waving, everyone pointing down at the plates of eggs that are arriving.

“Hey,” Adrian says. “Red, you got any idea what Scrooge needs to know?”

Bev blinks at him for a second before it clicks.

“I don’t,” she says, and Richie can’t tell if she’s lying. “But we’ll figure it out. Or we’ll figure out how you can show him the message.”

“I feel like option _b_ will fix option _a_ ,” Adrian says. He makes a show out of miming stubbing his cigarette out on the diner wall. “Alright, let’s eat some eggs.”

Bev rubs Richie’s shoulder as they head inside. It’s probably the most overwhelming gesture anyone’s given him for a while, and it makes Richie’s throat close and he has to sit in silence for a few seconds after he sits down. It’s been a long time since people have touched Richie like this - comforting touches, sure, but also a touch from someone who cares and knows him deeply.

Well. Not _too_ deeply. But that’s Richie’s own fault.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It’s a good lunch. It’s probably the best lunch Richie has had since he was a kid.

It’s quiet at first as everyone eats. But then the conversation kicks up, and they laugh a lot. Almost start a food fight. Take a picture of everybody and send it to Stan, making sure to include Adrian, though he shows up in the photo as an empty space. They draw a circle around him anyway, type out his name over his invisible head.

“I’m looking forward to meeting Stan,” Adrian admits after he’s stopped pacing and is sitting on the edge of the booth table. “He sounds like the guy with the most sense.”

“That’s our Stanley,” Richie says.

“I can’t wait to see him,” Mike says. “Do - should I apologize? For calling him-”

A chorus of _no-s_ rise from the table.

“It’s not your fault, Mike,” Ben says.

“I know, but-”

Mike looks like he might cry, so Richie does the only thing he knows how to do and kicks Mike under the table.

“Ow,” Mike says, but looks over. “Was that you?”

“It was,” Richie says. “Everybody’s gotta watch.”

He pours hot sauce over his eggs. A horrendous amount. He empties the fucking bottle. It renders the eggs inedible - this isn’t the tasty kind of hot sauce, but the HOT kind of hot sauce that focuses on heat over flavor - but Bev whoops and Adrian looks surprised and almost approving, so Richie starts cutting off a dripping chunk of toast.

“I’m only doing this ‘cause you’re dead,” he says to Adrian, “and also ‘cause you’re stuck to me.”

“Dude,” Eddie starts, but it’s too late.

Richie chews. His eyes immediately start to water, but he keeps going. He did do this a lot, like Eddie said. He’d eaten a lot of stupid shit on a dare.

He swallows the mouthful. It’s awful and it lights up his throat in the worst ways. 

“Amazing,” he rasps, and starts cutting another piece. 

“That l-looks awful,” Bill says.

Richie’s eyes stream. He wipes them with his sleeve, toasts Adrian with a forkful.

Adrian nods. He has his hand over his mouth, and he’s actually smiling. Some of it even looks like he’s laughing with Richie instead of at him. Another win.

“You can stop now,” Eddie says after another bite. He looks over at Adrian. “Dude, tell him he can stop. He will go through the whole thing to prove a point, and then he’ll be on the toilet for an hour. You’re stuck in a room with him, you want to be around for that?”

Adrian’s eyes go wide, then flatten back to normal.

“You can stop, Richard,” he says. 

Richie keeps chewing. Muffled, he says, “‘s for your vicarious living!”

“If I have to be in a room with you while you shit acid,” Adrian says, “I will make every second of your life a living hell. I will repeat everything you say in a falsetto. I will flirt with you continuously, rubbing my nubile, young chest-”

“Okay I’m done,” Richie gasps. He swallows the mouthful, then chugs some water. Ben pushes his own water over to him, and Richie downs that one as well.

“You need milk,” Eddie says. He turns around, searching for the waitress. “Can we get-”

“I’m fine,” Richie says. He wipes his eyes again.

The table settles. Everyone resumes eating, except for Richie, who nudges his food around on his plate and wipes at his face. When the waitress comes by and eyes it, he beams at her. 

“Should we start a divorcee group,” Bev asks Eddie about a minute after the hot sauce debacle.

“Uh,” Eddie says. “Sure?”

“It’ll be fun,” Bev assures him. 

Eddie looks less convinced.

“Sure,” he says. “Talking about marrying our parents sounds like it’s gonna be great.”

Bev laughs. It’s loud enough that everyone looks at her as she subsides into giggles, hiding it under her hand.

“You okay,” Ben asks.

She keeps giggling. Eddie looks both bewildered by the laughter and happy he caused it. It’s adorable again, as are most of the expressions Eddie makes. Richie only realizes he’s staring after a few seconds, after which he looks down at his plate.

“I’m fine,” Bev says. “Me and Eddie are going to make these jokes a thing.”

“We are?”

“We are,” Bev says. “It’s going to be hilarious. To us, anyway. It’ll freak everyone else out.”

Eddie snorts. “Okay. Great.”

Richie has vague memories of this happening as kids. Bev and Eddie would talk about their parents - his mom and her dad - but rarely when the others were around. When they did, they’d sometimes make a game out of it, saying stuff that was genuinely concerning and then falling over laughing after they’d traded a few stories back and forth.

“You guys should be on daytime TV,” Adrian says. “You’d never get boring. You’re all so fucked.”

“Hey,” Bill says. “We’re not - w-we - there was a clown monster!”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “It ruined our childhood and then erased our memories, of course we’re fucked.”

“Some more than others,” Adrian says. He waves at Richie, a finger-wave that Richie had done once at age 9 because he thought it was cool. and then stopped after he got told that only girls waved like that.

Richie nods at him. Nudges at his food. Hunches a little, then stops, because that’s a giveaway that something’s going on with him.

“Richie’s not fucked,” Eddie says sharply.

Richie looks over at him. Eddie’s glaring at Adrian in a way that he definitely doesn’t deserve.

“Uh,” Adrian says. “I mean - Turtle Jesus deemed him fucked enough to need a message from beyond the grave, so. I’d say that makes him more fucked than the rest of you.”

“He’s-” Eddie’s jaw tightens. “You don’t know us, asshole! You don’t know any of us, or what we’ve been through-”

Richie says, “Eds.”

“What,” Eddie snaps, turning to him. “He’s been shitting all over you since he got here!”

“Got here from _death_ ,” Richie reminds him. “‘Cause he _died_.”

“Oh, who _cares_ ,” Eddie says. “I died, Stan died, everybody died, it doesn’t mean he gets free range to be a dick to you!”

“Uhhhhh,” Richie says. “I think it kinda does, dude. And he’s not being that bad, especially since he thinks I’m some homophobic fuckhead who makes sexist jokes.”

Adrian says, “Oh, are you not,” but there’s not a lot of bite behind it.

“I - yeah, okay, I make sexist jokes,” Richie starts, but Eddie’s already talking over him.

“You don’t know shit about Richie, alright? Just - lay _off_.”

Richie expects a retort. When it doesn’t come immediately, he looks over. 

Adrian’s staring out the window. He looks very faraway. Has he ever been outside of Derry? Richie hopes so. 

“Eddie,” Bill says.

“Fuck off, I’m not apologizing,” Eddie says fiercely. 

Richie’s mouth twitches. Right. Eddie could be mean sometimes. Richie had almost forgotten. 

“Adrian,” he says, as he notices Adrian moving. 

Adrian doesn’t answer. He walks through the diner door.

And appears right next to Richie at the booth.

At first nothing happens. His expression remains far away. Then, slowly and then all at once, his face collapses into creases. He’s obviously trying to fight back tears, but he’s not winning.

“Fuck,” he mumbles. He clenches his fists. Then, louder and sharper: “ _Fuck-_ ”

“Hey,” Richie says.

“FUCK,” Adrian screams, and starts gasping. They’re pre-sob gasps.

Richie panics.

He gets up, squeezes out of the booth. 

“Hey,” he says. He stands in front of Adrian, ignoring the weird looks from the other people at the diner, who have been giving them weird looks since Eddie started yelling. Which is fair.

Richie starts to touch Adrian’s shoulder, then drops his hand when he remembers.

“I think I have an idea on what you’re sent to tell me,” he says.

Adrian heaves in a ragged breath. “Y-yeah?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. His throat clicks. 

He glances back at the table. Everyone is staring.

“I, uh.” Richie shifts on the spot. “I’m gonna-”

He thumbs at the door. 

“Okay,” Bill says. 

Richie nods. He doesn’t look at Eddie. Instead he shoves his hands in his pockets and heads outside, to a spot where there’s no windows for people to watch in on.

“So,” he says. He squirms. Takes his hands out of his pants pockets, put them in his jacket pockets. “So.”

“So,” Adrian says. It’s trying for dry and failing miserably. His voice is still shot.

Richie opens his mouth. 

It doesn’t come. 

“So,” Adrian prompts. “Come on, tell me the damage big enough for Turtle Jesus.”

Richie wants to laugh. He can’t. 

He tries to say it again, but it sticks in his throat. He’s never tried to tell anyone. He’s never said it out loud before. 

“I’m,” he says, and then stops.

Adrian waits. He crosses his arms. Taps his foot.

“I’m, uh,” Richie tries. He waves his hands at him, like Adrian’s going to get it by osmosis. One time Richie heard a lesbian say that meeting another gay person was like being in a foreign country and running into someone that knows your mother tongue. You run into them and they say hello and it’s like coming home: that recognition, that immense relief, the solidarity. 

Richie waves his hands some more, between the two of them.

At first Adrian just stares, waiting, and then making a face at the hand gestures. But then, slowly, something changes in his face. It smooths out. His eyes widen, then narrow, then widen again.

Then he says, “Are you _fucking_ serious right now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eddie: wtf dude stop being such an asshole  
> adrian, banging pots and pans together: I LITERALLY JUST DIED!!!! I AM DEAD!!!! JESUS FUCK!!!! OH GOD WHY IS THIS HAPPENING, RICHARD HAVE SOME HOT SAUCE SO I CAN FEEL A TINY BIT OF CONTROL IN MY UN-LIFE


	4. Chapter 4

Adrian laughs. It’s not the best thing to do right now, but who gives a fuck? He’s been sent by Turtle Jesus, back from the dead, because of some asshole’s internalized homophobia. It’s the funniest and the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.

“What the _fuck_ ,” he chokes. 

In front of him, Richie is a big ball of tension. All of him is clenched. Adrian doesn’t blame him. Coming out is hard at the best of times, and it probably doesn’t help that he’s getting hysterically laughed at.

And yet.

“You’re,” Adrian manages. Then he folds in half laughing again.

“Okay,” Richie says. 

Adrian tries to stop. He gets down to a weak chuckle.

“You closeted fuck,” he manages. He wipes at his eyes uselessly. “Don’t you - don’t you live in LA?”

Richie shrugs.

“Jesus Christ,” Adrian says. “It’s _LA_ , dude.”

He rubs his face. Feels nothing against his hands or face, because that’s how this dead thing goes.

“So is that it,” he asks. “Your damage is that you’re closeted?”

Richie shrugs jerkily. This is obviously a big deal for him, and Adrian still wants to laugh at him.

“Jesus,” Adrian says. “God. Okay - so that’s it! You come out, I don’t even have to give the message, because we already know what it’ll be, and then boom! I’m back to life and out of here and we never have to see each other again.”

Richie makes a noise in the back of his throat.

Adrian rolls his eyes. “You don’t want to come out. You’re _forty_.”

“I am forty,” Richie says, sounding weird and stitled. “And that’s a long time to - to be-”

“Yeah,” Adrian says. “I bet.”

Adrian has been out since he was 14, and has been presumed gay most of his life. He never really had a chance to pretend to be straight. He doesn’t think he would’ve done it, pretended to be anything other than himself, but then again - might’ve saved him some of the worst beatings. 

And if no one knew he was gay, he wouldn’t be dead. But that doesn’t matter, because even if Adrian had been in the closet, he wouldn’t still be in there at 26. He fucking wouldn’t. And there’s no version of reality where he’d still be in the closet at _forty_.

“Your friends seem like good people,” Adrian says, instead of all that. “Hot Librarian Hanlon will stick up for you, anyway. He stuck up for me.”

Richie nods. It takes a second. He takes his hands out of his pockets and folds his arms tight across his chest instead. He looks like he wants to disappear, hunching into those big shoulders, away from his height.

Adrian sighs. Tries to think of what he’d wanted someone to say to him when he’d come out to his family.

“Everything’s gonna be okay,” he says.

Richie gives him a look. It’s a little incredulous, because it’s probably the nicest thing Adrian’s said to him so far. But there’s also some desperation in it.

“Seriously,” Adrian says. He mimes patting Richie on the shoulder. “Now can we get it over with so I can get back to being alive? This isn’t just about you, dude.”

Richie blinks. 

“Uh,” he says. “Right.”

Adrian nods back at the diner. He knows he’s rushing him, but he’s _forty_ , for the love of god, and Adrian’s dead and wants that situation fixed.

They go back to the diner. Everyone’s getting up from the booth, and people glance at Richie as he comes back in. Like, strangers. Because they’d kind of made a scene by yelling at thin air.

“We’re gonna head back to the Inn,” Eddie says. “Do you want your hot sauce eggs in a doggy bag?”

Richie shakes his head. He looks not unlike a guy on his way to the gallows.

Adrian absentmindedly starts wondering which of his friends, if any, were the ones Richie had a crush on. Because childhood and teenage years are weird, and these guys are beautiful, and there’s no way Richie didn’t have feelings for at least one of them. Ben seems like a safe bet - kind, sweet Ben. But maybe that’s not Richie’s type. He seems weird like that. Maybe Bill? Everyone looks at him a little like he’s their personal lord and saviour. Yeah, maybe Bill.

“Rich,” Bev says. “You two have a good talk out there?”

Richie shrugs.

All the Losers are looking at him now. Adrian kind of respects them for owning the name. On the other hand, it’s a little lame.

“It was fine,” Richie says. Adrian’s known the guy for what, four hours, and he knows that it sounds off.

Eddie glares at Adrian, who gives a sunny grin.

“What,” he says. “We had a helpful talk. Can we get out of here now?”

There’s a brief setback where Mike tries to pay and everyone riots, but then they leave. Everyone casts worried glances over at RIchie or questioning looks at Adrian, who smiles at everyone, which only makes them unsettled.

“Sooo,” Eddie says after they’ve been walking in silence for a minute. “The talk was fine?”

“Yep,” Richie says. He glances over his shoulder, then around them. 

Adrian does the same. There’s no one in eavesdropping distance. 

Richie comes to a stop. Everyone else follows suit. They’re standing at the side of the road.

“What is it, buddy,” Mike says.

Adrian’s mouth twitches. _Buddy_. Aw.

Richie is still that tight knot of tension. His hands are in his pockets again.

“Uh,” he says. “I’m. Gay?”

His voice goes funny on the end of it. He coughs, looks down at the road. 

If Adrian could feel sensations, his stomach would be twisting. It always gets him, people coming out. Doesn’t matter who it is or who it’s to. For a second he’s fucking _invested_ , waiting with bated breath for everybody’s reaction.

It’s Mike that speaks first.

“Okay,” he says. “We’re really glad you told us, Rich.”

Everyone nods. Some look surprised, some look dazed. The dazed thing is mostly Eddie. Everyone else is just surprised.

Richie clears his throat. 

“Yeah, thought I should probably mention,” he says, still not looking at any of them. “We figured it might be the message Adrian has to give me. Y’know. _Come out of the closet, you giant pussy_.”

He laughs badly, then looks over at Adrian. “You don’t look like you’re coming back to life.”

“I don’t,” Adrian says. “Guys, do I look like I’m coming back to life?”

Mike sticks out his hand. It goes right through Adrian’s chest.

“No,” he says. “Sorry.”

“Huh,” Richie says. He swallows. “So - probably _not_ the message.”

“Guess not,” Adrian says. Fuck. That could’ve worked. 

“Huh,” Richie says. He shifts on the spot. “So that was - useless?”

Adrian claps his hands together. No sensation.

“Maybe you have to come out publicly,” he says. “Not just to these Losers.”

Richie stares at him.

“I’m not - I’m not going to do that,” he says, voice flat, still hunching into his shoulders like a prey animal.

“Rich,” Bev says softly. Like she’s appalled. Not _by_ him, but _for_ him. At the world, maybe, for making him so terrified.

Richie shakes his head. He leans a little towards Bev, but only for a second, and he doesn’t seem to notice he’s doing it.

“No,” he says. He stabs a finger towards Adrian. “That was - I only did that because _you_ can’t figure out how to give me that message-”

“Okay,” Adrian says. “So what ELSE do you have that might be the message? I really thought that was gonna be it. Some guy in his 40s tells you he’s still in the closet, you _assume_ that’s his big issue that’d require Turtle Jesus to send a guy to come and help him.”

“Wh - _help_?”

“Yeah, help.”

“Fuck your _help_ ,” Richie says, and it’s not biting, but Adrian bares his teeth anyway.

Bill says, “G-guys-”

“Shut _up_ , Bill,” Richie barks. He’s shaking. He jerks his head at Adrian and then storms off, into the trees.

Adrian rolls his eyes at the Losers, then follows.

“God, you’re so pathetic,” Adrian says as soon as they’re out of earshot. He misses the thrum of blood; his heart kicking up at a fight, verbal or otherwise. He wants his heartbeat back. “Just tell me whatever it is and let’s move on.”

“Fuck off,” Richie spits. He rakes his hand through his hair, which is oily and gross.

He starts pacing. Adrian stands back and watches. Richie rubs at his hair and his face and folds his arms and unfolds them and puts his hands in his pockets and then does it all again.

Adrian aches a little, watching him. Metaphorically. He can’t ache right now, but if he could, he’d be aching. It’s buried under the annoyance and the fact that he’s still very much dead, but the ache is metaphorically there.

“Have you never come out to anybody before,” he asks.

Richie shakes his head. Keeps pacing.

“Jesus Christ,” Adrian mutters. He can’t imagine it, 40 and never telling anyone. Or, he can, but he _really_ doesn’t want to. It makes him feel lonely in an unbearable way.

“It’s just us here, you giant wimp,” he says. “Just tell me. Did you kill someone?”

Richie shakes his head. Then he tilts it consideringly. 

“Other than that Bowers asshole,” Adrian says.

“Other than him, no,” Richie says. He stops pacing. Finally looks at him.

Adrian raises his eyebrows expectantly.

“It’s really fucking pathetic,” Richie warns.

Adrian flashes a smile. “I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

Richie sighs. Then, quietly: “I’m in love with Eddie.”

Adrian takes a second to remember which one Eddie is. Then he laughs, because how could he not? Of course Richie would have the choice between kind, sweet Ben and lovely Mike and all the others, and he’d pick the repressed short stack with anger issues.

“Could you please stop laughing when I tell you this shit,” Richie says.

Adrian swallows the next laugh. He makes his mouth quit twitching, then says, “If I got sent here to fairy godmother you two together, I swear to _God_ . Why is this happening? This is the dumbest shit that’s ever happened to anyone. I’m a _ghost_.”

“You’re not fairy godmothering us together,” Richie says. “I think it’s just - I gotta come clean. Right?”

Adrian shakes his head. “No, no - he loves you back. Yeah, I totally see it.”

“Oh, fuck _off_ .” 

Adrian grins. “What! He could love you. Your guys’ love language is, like - insulting each other and having competitions over who’s the biggest coward.”

It’s supposed to be a soft jab, but obviously Adrian hasn’t been looking where he’s punching.

Richie yells, “HEY,” and then stops. His hands tremble. 

Adrian holds up his hands. “Just saying.”

“Yeah,” Richie croaks. “Yeah? You know what, I’d rather be a coward. Look where being brave got you. One of the guys on the bridge was a middle schooler. You got killed by a 13 year old! Was it fucking worth it, to - to - hold your boyfriend’s hand at the fair?”

God, Adrian misses his heartbeat. Blood rushing through his ears, forming a bass he can yell to. He misses being able to go cold, to go hot. He would’ve gone both if he had a body right now. Suddenly he’s back at the fair, getting kicked in the face. Scrabbling for his inhaler. Don screaming in the background.

_Was it worth it - ?_

“Yes,” he hears himself say. “At least I’m not - cowering in the shadows, lying about my sad, nonexistant sex life with women, making this biiiiig show so no one sees that - GASP - you’re a giant fucking homo! Newsflash, asshole, you live in LA!”

“Hate crimes still happen in LA,” Richie yells. 

Birds fly from the trees. 

“Yeah,” Adrian screams back. “But not like fucking DERRY! If you’re not our by 40 in Derry, okay! I still think you’re a pussy, but okay! But in LOS FUCKING ANGELES? It’s LOS FUCKING ANGELES! _EVERYBODY_ is gay in LA!”

“Ohhh, yeah,” Richie says. “Homophobia ceases to fucking exist as soon as you hit California-”

“Shut up,” Adrian screams. It’s strange not to feel his face heat up. “Shut up! I hate that I’m stuck here with you! I want to see my boyfriend!”

“Shut _up_ about your boyfriend,” Richie hisses. His eyes are wet. “We get it, you’re GAY!”

“I hope you fucking do,” Adrian yells back. “I’m not ashamed of it, unlike some people, you old, closeted, unfunny sack of SHIT!”

Richie goes still. Both of them are breathing hard.

From closer than it should be, there’s a yell. It’s Mike.

“You two okay out there?”

Richie’s eyes close. 

“I’m going to find out how far away from you I can be without you snapping back like a yo-yo,” he says dully, and then walks off. 

Adrian stays in place. 

When Richie comes past him, maybe a meter away, he pauses. Hunches some more. Says, “I’m s - you didn’t deserve-”

“Fuck off,” Adrian says, but his voice breaks and ruins the effect.

Richie nods. He keeps walking through the trees.

Adrian waits to get snapped back. The footsteps don’t fade, but they do get quiet. Then they stop. There’s a murmur of voices. The others wouldn’t have heard them talking, just screaming.

He stands there for a while. Then he sits down. He looks up at the sky, where the birds are starting to come back. They hadn’t flown away at Adrian’s yelling, just Richie’s. Birds can’t hear him. Nothing can. He’s not here. He’s far away. He’s nothing, feeling nothing and touching nothing, reaching out and touching leaves and his hands go through them. He’s not in Derry, he’s not _anywhere_ -

“Uh,” a voice says. “Hi?”

Adrian twists to look. 

Eddie Kasprak waves at him.

Adrian groans and turns back. “They sent _you_?”

“Kind of,” Eddie says after a moment. He comes over and sits down next to him. He makes a face at the dirt, like he’s appalled by it, but doesn’t comment.

Adrian sniffs. Turns his face away. “Fuck off, you repressed office job small-faced fuck.”

Eddie pauses. “Do I have a small face?”

“It’s so small,” Adrian says, knee-jerk. 

“Oh,” Eddie says. There’s a rustle, like he’s touching the leaves. “Look, I’m sorry about how I acted before-”

“Shut up.”

“Okay,” Eddie says. 

They sit there in silence for a while. It’s not companionable, but it’s something. Adrian has never wanted to hold someone’s hand more in his life. He doesn’t want it to be Eddie’s, but honestly, he’d try it if he could. He thinks Eddie feels bad enough that he’d let him. Also, if he _is_ gay - there’s always that kinship there. Small town gays have it in spades. They’re so fucking invisible and alone otherwise. They need more like them to be there, to say _hello, yes, I am here like you. I am here like you and I am like you. You are not alone._

There’s no lump in Adrian’s throat. Adrian can’t feel his throat. But his voice is still wrecked when he speaks.

“I just wanna talk to him,” he says. “He must be having such a bad time. He hated it when I got hurt. And he hated watching me getting hurt even more. He was screaming for me.”

Eddie nods. When Adrian looks over, his small face is pinched and earnest.

Adrian had loved Derry, growing up. Loved the sleepy streets and the trees and the endless sky overhead. He still loves it, somewhere deep in him, a flame he’s never been able to put out. He’s never really wanted to until now. He loves it so much, even with all the beatings, the jeerings, the humiliation. Don had called his love for Derry his _fuck-you_ love. _Fuck you, I love this place. You can’t make me hate it._

He loves it just as much as he wants to get out: desperately. This town he’s lived in his whole life, and after it, now. This town he died in. This town he was -

“God,” Adrian says. “I - I died. I can’t believe I fucking died. They killed me.”

“I’m so sorry,” Eddie says. It’s like his face, all pinched and earnest. His eyes are very big. “I can’t imagine…”

“No, you can’t,” Adrian says, thinking of closets, of squeezing yourself into them. There was a time when he was young that he put himself in before he knew what the closet was. Maybe Eddie understands more than Adrian thinks. 

He asks, “What was your death like?”

Eddie swallows. His throat moves with it. “It was…”

“I don’t mean you don’t know how death feels,” Adrian says. “Obviously you do. I just mean the - hate. How much they hated me. ‘Cause of what I am.”

He wraps an arm around his knees.

“So,” he says. “Your death?”

“I,” Eddie says. He swallows again. Touches the dirt and the leaves like he’s never seen them before. “It was - I’d just begun again. Got all my memories back. And I realized I’d spent most of my life in a haze, and then I woke up. I thought I was going to die just after I woke up. Before I could live a life I actually liked.”

 _None of us never really got out of Derry,_ Mike had said during the initial explanation. Adrian had thought he was being too nice. Everyone got out of this town except for Mike. But there was obviously a lot of crap that they hadn’t told Adrian, things that might’ve made Mike’s statement true. Having their memories erased - Bev had alluded to this, said something about how they all stayed stuck in their old fears. They couldn’t get out.

“Amen to that,” said Adrian, who has never left Derry except for a school trip when he was nine. “Why didn’t you have a life you liked? You’re old. You have money.”

Eddie snorted. “I guess I’m just repressed. Like you said.”

“Yeah, you look it.”

“I do?

“Yeah,” Adrian says. “You look like you buried so much shit that the container’s straining and it’s gonna burst. One little prick and boom. Shit everywhere.”

“That’s disgusting,” Eddie says, but it sounds absent. He touches the dirt again, rubs it between his fingers. 

Adrian watches him. This guy’s a clean freak, right? There have been a few jokes about it today, and Eddie’s said some stuff that fit with his clean freak image. Apparently it’s a big thing for him.

“What do you think it is,” Eddie says. “The stuff I’ve repressed?”

Adrian looks at him.

“Sorry,” Eddie says after a moment. “That’s - you’re going through a lot-”

“I know why you’re asking me,” Adrian says. 

It has a few options. One, Eddie says he has no idea what Adrian’s talking about, which he might not. Two, he gets offended by the insinuation, which doesn’t matter, because Adrian can’t get punched right now. Three -

Eddie looks away, down at the leaves. “What do you think, then?”

Adrian raises his eyebrows. Okay. Cool. The gay love story continues.

“That it’s weird that you’re asking me,” he says honestly.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He sighs, rubs at his forehead, which has an absurd amount of creases. Not wrinkles, but they’re getting there. 

“You’re right. I’m sorry-”

“Hey,” Adrian says. He reaches over, mimes patting Eddie’s arm, drifting his hand over it. “I hope you get your good life.”

Eddie stares. For a moment he’s actually pretty cute. If you’re into repressed, straight-married guys who work boring jobs and need everything to be freakishly clean.

“You’ll get yours too,” Eddie says. “The turtle - Maturin will bring you back, if he can.”

Adrian gives a flimsy smile. “What if he can’t?”

“He will,” Eddie says, sounding almost sure. “And you and Don can go - uh.”

“Away from here,” Adrian says. He uncurls his arm from his knees, tilts his head up. The birds are all back now, high in the trees. 

“We’re gonna leave Derry in the dust,” he continues, and it aches, but it’s a healing kind of ache. “And we’re never gonna come back.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, soft, like he’s thinking of something else. When Adrian looks over, Eddie is watching the trees. No, the birds. Adrian doesn’t know the names but he’d known them once, when he was a child, back when his love for Derry had no dark bits. Don had been reading a book on birds and he’d told him what these birds were.

Adrian joins Eddie in watching one of them take off, flying up through the branches until it vanishes into the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: writes adrian and richie screaming deeply hurtful things at each other
> 
> me: god i love them so much


	5. Chapter 5

When Eddie and Adrian emerge from the woods, the others are still standing at the side of the road. Eddie tries to meet Richie’s eyes, but it’s a lost cause. When Eddie bumps their elbows together, something they used to do as kids when the other wasn’t paying attention, Richie flinches. It’s little, but it’s there.

When Eddie asks him if he’s okay, Richie nods.

“There’s something else we can try,” he says, slow and reluctant.

“What?”

“We’ll do that after I see Don,” Adrian says quietly. Also a little grudgingly.

It looks like news to Richie, but he doesn’t argue. He actually looks relieved. 

Eddie waits for the two of them to start fighting again, but it doesn’t come. All that happens is they avoid each other’s eyes. Both of them look very tired.

“What’d you guys talk about,” Richie says as they start walking.

Eddie hopes his face isn’t as warm as it feels.

“Just - getting out of Derry.”

Richie laughs. “Yeah. We fucking better.”

“We will,” Eddie says. “All of us.”

Richie doesn’t reply to that. Eddie wonders if he’s thinking about getting out of Derry in a deeper sense - leaving everything behind. All their guilt, the things they hid from, the shit they buried. All the things they only remembered a few days ago, but had followed them through their whole lives, weighing them down.

It had taken a backlog of memories for Eddie to realize why dating never felt right for him. He’d gotten shadows of it, but the proper realization, the lightbulb moment, had come after the gong got hit in that restaurant and he’d turned around to see Richie holding the ringer.

_ Oh _ , he’d thought.  _ Oh, fuck.  _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


They’re walking back to the Inn when Mike gets the call: Don’s car has broken down about half an hour away from Derry.

Adrian immediately springs into action. Or, he tries to get everyone else to spring into action, since he can’t really do anything. He gestures a lot. 

Richie keeps quiet. Adrian doesn’t gesture at him as he tries to get everyone into their rental cars.

They end up taking Mike’s car. It will only fit 4 people, so Eddie offers to take Richie in his rental car. And by extension, Adrian.

Richie twitches a little at this, and Adrian gives him an unreadable look that Eddie doesn’t like.

“Or I can take someone else,” Eddie says.

“Nah,” Adrian says. “We’re good with you. Right, Trashmouth?”

“Don’t call him that,” Eddie finds himself saying. When everybody looks at him, he sighs.

“You don’t say it right,” he says. “It -  _ we  _ say it with-”

He waves his hands uselessly. The rest of the sentence sounds stupid and kind of dangerous considering what’s just happened.

Adrian grins. It’s more tired than anything else.

“Love,” he says. “Got it. Richard, how do you feel about our driving arrangements?”

Eddie tries to seem as casual as possible. He also forgets what he usually does with his hands, so he holds them at his sides at what feels like a weird distance from his torso, but if Richie notices his weird hands, he doesn’t mention anything.

“I feel fine about our driving arrangements,” Richie says flatly. 

“Great,” Adrian says. “Let’s go get my BOYFRIEND.”   


He turns away as he says it, but he yells it in a way that’s obviously directed at Richie, who starts rolling his eyes and then stops like he can’t be bothered. He follows Adrian towards the Inn parking lot, and everyone trails after him.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It is, thankfully, a quiet drive. Right up until they pass the NOW LEAVING DERRY sign.

At first Eddie doesn’t notice Adrian disappearing. What he does notice is Richie jerking in the passenger’s seat and starting to choke.

“What,” Eddie says. He starts to pull over. “Rich, what-”

“G-go back,” Richie manages. He grabs at his own throat. “Go-”

“Okay-”

Eddie does a U-turn, narrowly avoiding t-boning Mike’s car as he swerves. He yells an apology that the other car probably can’t hear, casting worried glances over at Richie as he spasms.

“Almost there,” Eddie says, and halfway through it they cross back into Derry.

Richie stops convulsing. He sags into his seat.

At the same time, Adrian appears in the backseat, eyes wide, screaming, “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!”

“We don’t know,” Eddie says. He indicates and pulls over again. Nods at Mike, who is driving his way. 

Richie massages at his throat. Eddie puts a hand on his shoulder without thinking about it. Richie glances at him, but seems too shaken up to think much on it.

“My blood was doing something weird,” Richie says. “And my throat was - also doing something. Like - all of me was solid?”   


He twists to the backseat. “Where’d you go?”

“Fuck knows,” Adrian says shakily. “Not to the turtle space. It was like I just - wasn’t anywhere.”

“Huh,” Richie croaks. He clears his throat, rubs at it again. “God, I’ve never treasured all the liquid in my body more than I do right now.”   


Mike pulls up next to them and rolls the window down. “You guys okay?”

“We’re fine,” Eddie says. “We, uh. I don’t think Adrian can leave Derry.”

Mike trades a look with the others. He looks disappointed, but not surprised.

“Looks like I’m staying behind,” Richie says. He doesn’t sound happy about it.

Eddie checks back at Adrian. His jaw is shifting from side to side, and his arms are crossed tight. He’s sitting in the middle seat with his head on the headrest, tilting back like a teenager who’s trying to listen to music while his parents fight.

“It’s not far to where Don’s broken down,” Mike says. “We’ll be back soon.”

Eddie pauses. He’s not sure why, he just - doesn’t like how this is going. He wants to say something to hold them back, but what good would that do? They have to go get Don.

“Alright,” Eddie says. He waves. “Safe travels, guys.”   


He gets a few goodbyes from the others, all of whom are giving him looks that aren’t pitying, but fall close to it. Sympathy, maybe. Everyone knows it’ll be an uncomfortable time, getting stuck with 

Richie and Adrian, the world’s most reluctant partnership.

The others drive off. Eddie watches them vanish down the road. 

He sighs. Sits back in his seat and checks on Richie again, who is fiddling with the radio even though the car is off.

“Do you want me to give you guys some space to talk,” he says.

“No,” Adrian and Richie say, fast and in perfect unison.

“Right,” Eddie says. He tries to think of something else to say. “So what’s this last thing you can try?”

Richie makes a weird face. Adrian does, too, leaning forwards from the backseat. No, his face isn’t weird, it’s considering. He looks at Richie.

“We’re not doing it right now,” Richie says. He notices Adrian and glares at him. “ _ We’re not doing it right now _ . Didn’t you want to see Don before we try anything else?”

Adrian shrugs. “I was mostly using the _ I won’t show you the message even if I know how to give it until I see my boyfriend _ thing to make you get him here. Now I know he’ll be here soon, I just want to get things over with. I’m down for whatever gets me alive again. You can do this whenever, but now’s pretty fucking convenient.”

He gives Richie a pointed look. Richie makes a face again and averts his eyes back to the radio. Turns it up as high as it’ll go.

“Great, make us deaf when we turn the car on again,” Eddie says. He turns it back down. 

“Gotta protect our hearing,” Richie says. He says it absently, like he’s about to turn it into a joke but then he forgot the punchline. He starts fiddling with his sleeves.

Eddie watches him. He grips the steering wheel.

He’s embarrassed, Eddie realizes. Richie embarrassed at 40 looks the same as him embarrassed at 14 - an obvious lack of eye contact, a lot of fidgeting. If it was a little humiliation, he’d crack jokes to make people forget about whatever had happened. But the worse the embarrassment, the quieter he’d get. 

Eddie waits. If they were kids again, he’d just pester Richie into talking again. But it doesn’t feel safe now. Especially with all that’s happened today.

“Hey,” Richie says after a long minute of silence, still picking at his sleeves. “How much did you guys hear from me and Adrian in the woods, anyway? You were all  _ very  _ vague about it back there.”

“Just - some yelling,” Eddie says. He tries to think of safer things. Like how this rental car hasn’t been cleaned properly. Not a deep clean. None of these places deep-clean, they just do whatever they can get away with and shove the next person in to pile more microbes into the lining, which they’ll never get out when they’re doing the pathetic go-over that they call cleaning.

Richie nods. He’s pulling a piece of string from his sleeve now.

“But not the quieter stuff,” he says.

Eddie shakes his head.

Richie relaxes. It’s small, a loosening of his shoulders, but it’s there.

“Why,” Eddie says. “What’d you talk about?”

“What do you think,” Richie says. He glances back at Adrian.

Eddie follows suit. Adrian has been uncommonly quiet, but he’s still there. He waves when the two of them look at him.

“Oh, am I in on this conversation,” he asks.

“Hasn’t stopped you from jumping in before,” Richie says. He settles back in his seat. “Just making sure you don’t - start saying shit that shouldn’t be said.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Adrian says.    


Richie opens his mouth.

“Okay, fuck off, I would,” Adrian amends. “But only ‘cause I’m personally involved in this bullshit. I wouldn’t care otherwise. But this isn’t just about  _ you _ , remember?”

Richie closes his eyes.   


“Do you remember, Richard?”   


“Jesus,” Richie says. “Yes, okay, I  _ know _ . May I remind you that you’re supposed to be giving me a message?  _ I’m  _ not the one fucking up here. You just got it in your head that we can finagle our way around this without you doing what you got sent here to do. Hey Eds, remember when I put  _ finagle  _ down in Scrabble and we got into a fight for two hours about whether or not it’s a word?”

Eddie snorts involuntarily. “We couldn’t find a dictionary.”

Richie nods. “Had to go over to Stan’s. Mr. Uris opened the door to find us standing there screaming at each other and then you stopped long enough to say  _ hello, Mr. Uris _ and then you yelled at me for not being polite and saying hello to Stan’s Dad.”

Eddie laughs. He remembers now. The memories had come back slow and then all at once, but there was still a lot of everyday stuff that has to be mentioned before it comes to the surface.

Adrian says, “You two sound like little nightmares.”   


“We were,” Richie says, at the same time that Eddie says, “I was fine, Richie was a fucking asshole.” 

Richie smiles. It’s his first one in hours that doesn’t look strained. Instead it’s almost relieved.   


“Oh, right,” he says. “And what, you were a little angel?”

“I-” Eddie hesitates. He wants to say yes. Because he was. He obeyed his mommy and didn’t stir trouble. Except when he did: when he ran away to save his friends, when he snuck out of the house and into situations that would make his mother have a heart attack on the spot. He also routinely spoke back to teachers under his breath to make Richie crack up and then get detention for causing a ruckus in class.   


“I had my demon moments,” he says.

Richie laughs. It’s further away this time. Eddie shouldn’t have paused so long. Now he’s losing him.

When he looks over, Richie’s looking out the window to the YOU ARE NOW LEAVING DERRY sign. 

“I used to come out here sometimes,” Eddie says. “And just - take a few steps out of Derry. Tell myself I’d get out, properly out someday.”

Both Richie and Adrian make a noise. It’s close to the same noise, deep in their throats, a little bitter.

“Yeah,” Richie says. “Look how that turned out.”

His head shifts like he’s about to check the backseat. Then he settles back and says, “How’re you doing, Adrian?”   


Adrian pauses. 

“Other than still dead,” Richie clarifies.

Adrian sighs. “Other than that, I’m  _ fantastic _ .”

“Great,” Richie says. He keeps staring at the sign. Something passes over his face, a dullness in his eyes.

“We’re gonna get out of here,” Eddie tells him. “All of us.”

Richie takes a second to reply. When he does, he’s still looking wearily up at the sign.

“That a promise, Eds?”   


“Yeah,” Eddie says. “And - we’re all gonna stay here as long as it takes until all of us can get out. Together.”   


“There is no fucking way,” Richie says, “that I’m making all of you stay here. If it’s another couple days - whatever, waste your time here, it doesn’t matter. But if it gets up to  _ weeks- _ ”

“Rich-”

“This place is fucking  _ acid _ ,” Richie says. “It - it eats us from the inside out, it doesn’t matter that IT’s dead, it’s still acid. At least to us. If you can leave, you get out and don’t look back-” 

“Rich-”

“You gotta get out of this  _ fucking  _ town-”

Richie’s voice breaks. He scrubs his hands down his face, turns away.

Eddie says, “Richie.”

“Nope, shut up,” Richie says. He squeezes his eyes closed, then opens them. They’re mostly clear. “Eds, you can’t stay here for me.” 

“I can and I will,” Eddie says. “Fuck you for thinking I’d do anything else.”   


From the backseat, Adrian makes another noise. This one’s almost a laugh.

“Sorry,” he says when Eddie turns around to glare. “I’ve had this same conversation with Don, is all. Weird to hear it from someone else.”

The car goes quiet for a while after that. Eddie stares at his hands, which are still around the steering wheel. He clenches his fingers around it, then relaxes. He’d tried a stress ball in his thirties, but he’d gotten too tempted to throw it at people, so he’d stopped and just kept gritting his teeth. His dentists have been telling him to stop for decades. Eddie has tried, of course, but he just switches to other things - biting his nails, which is disgusting, or picking at his cuticles. Grating his teeth is much less noticeable. And he can afford the dental work it causes.

He takes slow, measured breaths through his nose. He’d picked this up from an old therapist.

_ Focus on nothing else but your breath, _ she’d said.

Eddie tries, but he doubts Mrs. Heckman had been in a situation as ridiculous or stressful as this one. She’d be thinking about other things too if she was in a car with a ghost and a childhood friend Eddie had feelings for. Who is also a man. Because Eddie is gay. Which is a fact he’d realized less than three days ago.

_ In _ , he thinks, instead of all of that.  _ And out. _

His chest rises and falls. 

“Are you doing breathing exercises,” Adrian says.

“Uh,” Eddie says. “Yes?”

“Rude,” Adrian says.   


“‘Cause you can’t breathe, ‘cause you’re dead,” Richie supplies, still staring at the sign.

Adrian clicks his tongue. He sounds very, very tired. 

“Got it in one, Richard. I am  _ very  _ dead.”

Eddie stares at them both. When they don’t continue, he says, “I’ll try to breathe quieter.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


A few minutes later, a car appears in the distance.

Adrian immediately gets out of the car. He grabs for the handle first, and then swears when his hand goes through. Then he just steps through the car.

“Is it Mike,” Eddie says as he gets out.

Richie follows suit. When he’s standing on the grass, he squints down the road as the car comes further into view.

“Doesn’t look like it,” he says. “Mike’s car is brown, right?”

“Mike’s car is brown,” Eddie confirms.

The car coming towards them is grey. 

Richie waves towards Adrian, who is standing next to the sign. 

“False alarm,” he calls.

Adrian has already seemed to catch onto this. He lets out a long, dramatic sigh and turns around.

“Wait,” Eddie says.

Richie stops. He’d turned too, back towards the car.

It gets closer. There’s a man in the driver’s seat and a woman in the passenger’s. They both have dark hair, and the guy - 

Eddie walks forwards. He crosses the town line, to Adrian’s eyeroll.

He holds out a hand. Waves.

The car slows and stops across the road from him. 

Behind him, Richie says, “Oh, shit.”   


Stanley Uris climbs out of the car. He’s wearing sunglasses and a cardigan. His hair is wavy and his arms, which are exposed by rolling up his sleeves, are smooth and unhurt. He’s smiling.

Eddie smiles back. His face might be doing other things - his eyes are stinging - but the important thing is the grin. 

“Hi, Stan,” he says. He goes up and hugs him as Stan’s in the middle of saying hi, and Stan hugs back for a good couple seconds before pulling back.

“Hi, Eddie,” Stan says, and gets to finish it this time. Then he looks over and his smile ticks. Eddie turns to see Richie and Adrian standing at the town line, Richie smiling and crying, Adrian waving and looking bored.

“Ah,” Stan says. “You must be the, uh. Ghost?”

“That’s me,” Adrian says. “You’re the sensible one?”

“That’s me,” Stan says dryly. He looks sideways, where his wife has gotten out of the car and came to stand beside him. “Patty, this is, uh. Richie and Eddie. And can you - see -?”   


“Just Richie and Eddie,” Patty says. She has a soothing voice. “Sorry, where is-”

Stan points. “Just there. To the left of Richie.”   


“Right,” Patty says. She waves at what must be empty space to her. “Hi. I’m Patty. Hi,” she adds to Eddie.

“Hi,” Eddie says. He meets Stan’s eyes. 

“Oh, I told her everything,” Stan says. Then, to Richie: “This greeting sucks. Are you just gonna stand there?”

Richie laughs. It’s wet. 

“Actually,” he says, “I kind of need you to come here. We’re going by ghost rules right now. Can’t cross town lines.”   


“Oh,” Stan says. “Ghost rules. Great.”   


And then he walks over. Richie’s hugging him before he has two feet over the line, dragging him in. Stan laughs, a surprised sound that jolts at the end, like he’s thrown by the emotion behind it, and Eddie watches them and smiles so hard his face hurts. 

He isn’t sure how hard he believes that they might be okay. But as he stands there watching Stan and Richie have a competition of how hard they can squeeze each other as it devolves into insults and relieved crying, he believes it harder than he ever has.


	6. Chapter 6

They go back to the Inn to wait. Adrian doesn’t put up a fight - actually, he insists. Patty mentions she’s hungry and Stan says something about food deeper into town and Richie says, “I mean, we can go for food, but we’re kind of waiting-”

He looks over at Adrian, who is indescribably tired. Not physically - of course not physically, he’s not  _ anything  _ physically. But he’s tired in his soul. If that’s what he is now - all soul, no body. That might make sense. 

“Yeah, whatever,” Adrian says. “Let’s go get Mr. and Mrs. Sensible food.”

“We can wait,” Eddie says. “Don should be-”

“Text Mike where we’ll be,” Adrian says, instead of yelling and swearing at everyone like he sorely wants to. It won’t help, and Patty seems really nice, and he’s just decided he’s allowing himself one big breakdown a day. Tomorrow he can have another one. When Patty’s not around.

It doesn’t matter anyway, he tells himself. Ten minutes of travel doesn’t make a difference. He’ll see Don soon. In less than an hour, almost definitely. And then -

As Richie, Eddie and Adrian turn back to the car, Adrian gasps. Stumbles.

“What’s up,” Richie asks, eyes wide. 

Adrian shakes his head. Touches his forehead, just under his hairline.

“Don’t know,” he says. “I - something?”   


“Okay,” Richie says. He’s stopped, has his full attention on Adrian now. “That’s - more than we had before. Good something or bad something?”

“Uh,” Adrian says. “Good? It felt - it  _ felt _ like…”   


He rolls his tongue in his mouth. Nothing, there’s no sensation, but before there had been a flash of it in his head. An impossible sensation, a huge warm flash, like a sunspot unleashed in the small space inside a human skull.

“Maturin,” Adrian finishes, and he doesn’t know it’s true until he says it.

Paused beside his car, Stan’s breath falters loud enough that Adrian looks over. Stan’s eyes are wider than Richie’s, not fear but close to it. Awe, maybe. Anticipation.

“You’ve talked to him,” Stan says, after a few seconds of swallowing.

Adrian nods, then turns it into a shrug.

“We didn’t have time for an in-depth conversation,” he says. “But we yelled at each other for a bit, sure. You’re familiar with our Lord and Savior, Turtle Jesus?”

Stan’s mouth twitches, then pulls out flat. He glances over at Patty, who is standing beside the passenger’s side, door open but not getting in yet. She makes a facial expression and Stan makes one back, a talk in miniature, rehearsed for decades. 

Patty smiles at Stan, all dimples. Adrian thinks briefly of Don, of sweetness and steadiness. He thinks of anchors. 

“He’s showed up a few times over the years,” Stan says.

Patty says, “The turtle… as in-?”

Stan jerks his head in a nod.

“The turtle couldn’t help us,” Eddie says, distantly. When everyone looks at him, he seems just as surprised as the others.

“Uh,” Adrian says. “What?”

Eddie shakes his head. “I don’t-”

“He managed,” Stan says. He pinches at the bridge of his nose. His hand shakes. “He - he found a way.”

He looks at Adrian, then at Eddie. Something passes over his face.

Patty gasps. “Oh-”

She reaches to cover her mouth, but stops just before her hands touch her face. She’s staring right at Adrian.

Adrian blinks. He moves a little, rolls his shoulders, shifts side to side. “Can you-?”

“I saw,” Patty says, and blinks hard. “Just for a moment. He’s - in a cap and a shirt with a logo on it? He looks-”

She stops. Purses her lips.

Adrian grins. “No, tell me what I look like! Richie, tell her to-”

“Adrian wants to know what you think he looks like,” Richie says.

Patty shakes her head. Glances over at Stan with a hint of a smile.

“Wow, I’m so excited now,” Adrian says. “Stan, tell her-”

“He looks a little like a MTV guy,” Patty says.

Adrian bursts out laughing. 

“Only a little,” Patty continues. “Just - I don’t know, something about his face. Maybe his clothes? Is this offensive?”

“He doesn’t  _ seem  _ offended,” Stan says, straight-faced and watching Adrian bend over in laughter.

Eventually Adrian stops laughing. He tells Stan to kiss her cheek for him. 

Stan does. Then they go and get food.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Stan and Patty get to-go sandwiches - baloney and cheese - from a diner. They eat them in Richie’s room at the Inn. 

It’s just hit four in the afternoon. It feels like it’s been an eternity.

Patty gets glimpses of Adrian three more times. Flickers, she describes them. Less than half a second. 

It’s - something. No one can tell what it means. Has everyone around Derry been able to see Adrian in millisecond snippets? Adrian hasn’t noticed anyone glancing at him, but he’s been pretty distracted.

“I don’t think that’s it,” Stan says. He’s sitting on Richie’s bed, next to Richie. Beside him is Patty, holding her husband’s hand. They’re stroking each other’s hands in a sickeningly sweet way. Eddie and Adrian are pacing in seperate parts of the room again, and never the twain shall meet.

“What do you think, O Turtle Whisperer,” Richie says. At Stan’s look: “What? You saw more of him than any of us, right?”

Stan makes a face. Then he tilts his head like,  _ fair _ . 

“I don’t think it’s everyone,” he says. “I think it’s just Patty. And - maybe Audra, if she came down to Derry.”

“Ohhh,” Richie says. “It’s a  _ wife  _ thing.”

“Sort of,” Stan says. 

He doesn’t say anything about Eddie’s wife. Whatever the hell her name was. Something old and ugly that reminded Adrian of a parakeet. M-something? Richie had brought it up earlier today while 

Adrian was around, a cautious teasing that Eddie had immediately shut down. 

Adrian checks Eddie’s fingers. No ring, but there is a tan line, so it’s a recent removal. Okay, then. The gay thing probably didn’t help the marriage. 

_ You poor bastard, _ Adrian thinks as he watches Eddie pace. Then he makes himself stop thinking of it, because he doesn’t have time to worry about other people’s bullshit right now. If he’s going to get invested, he can do it after he’s alive again.   


_ If  _ he’s alive again. 

“So you have a special bond with Mr. Turtle Jesus,” Adrian says to Stan, instead of dwelling on that goddamn mess.

“Oh, he’s a  _ mister  _ now,” Richie mutters.

Stan glances at him. His mouth twitches.

“Apparently,” he says. 

Adrian nods. Chins himself on his hands. “Any advice on how to tune into his signal?”

“I,” Stan says, and sighs. His hand tightens on Patty’s, and she squeezes back.

“I never  _ tried  _ to tune in,” he says. “I just - did. We had a more… open... link. Than the others.”

“Right,” Adrian says. “How’d you get that?”   


Stan’s eyes go blank, just for a second. Then he’s back, and he shudders hard. His hands are white around Patty’s, who is gripping back just as hard.

Adrian looks over at Richie, who is looking over at Eddie with the same confusion and concern. 

“Sorry,” Stan says. He puts his shoulders back. “I, uh. I saw IT.”   


“Oookay,” Adrian says. “We  _ all  _ saw IT. Not Miss Patty here, but-”

“No,” Stan says. “I  _ saw  _ him. Beyond the clown. I saw it, what it really was. Beyond the - Deadlights.”

_ Deadlights _ , Adrian thinks. He’s only heard stories from the Losers, but for some reason the name fucks with him like he’s seen inside the Deadlights, too - the impossible horror of them, the endless brightness where children’s screams are the least of it. He shudders along with Stan.

“Well,” he says. “I’m dead. That should - I should have  _ some  _ open connection, right? I’m not attached to - life, but I am attached to something, so-”

At that, his head throbs again. Warmth like a sunspot, explosive and overwhelming and - weirdly comforting. It clears his head of anything Deadlight-related.

He must make a noise again, because everyone looks at him.

“Okay,” Adrian says. “That was - we’re making progress, guys.”

Richie says, “Was that him?”

“What’d he say,” Eddie asks.

Adrian shrugs. “He’s not too good with words, our Turtle. I think he’s - I don’t know, he pushed some feelings at me.”

“Feelings,” Stan repeats. His brow is furrowed, but in familiarity more than confusion, like he’s playing an instrument after a decade of disuse.

“Yeah,” Adrian says. “Like-”

Richie’s phone vibrates. Adrian immediately hones in on it, all thoughts of Maturin gone. Or, most of them. They linger around the edges.

“I’m getting it,” Richie says when Adrian eyeballs him hard. He checks the phone. “Okay, they’re pulling up.”   


Adrian goes to stand at the door, then starts pacing again, because he isn’t a fucking golden retriver waiting for his owner. He detours and walks through Eddie, who tries to swerve out of the way but doesn’t do it in time. Adrian clips through him.

“What the hell,” Eddie says, hunching into his shoulders.

“What,” Adrian says. “No cold spots for this ghost.”

“It’s still  _ weird _ ,” Eddie says. He shakes himself and keeps pacing.

Adrian follows suit, orbiting back to his usual pacing. Richie is standing now, watching Adrian and unclenching and clenching his hands like he’s waiting for instructions.

“Sit,” Adrian tells him.

Eddie glares at him, but Richie sits without comment. He doesn’t stop clenching and unclenching his hands.

“Should we go,” Patty asks.

Adrian shakes his head. Then nods. Then shakes his head again when Stan and Patty start to stand.   


“He might not be able to see me,” he says.

Patty’s mouth pinches, then flattens. 

_ She should be on the Muppets _ , Adrian thinks. It’s not that she’s silly or performative, but she’s so -  _ good _ . She radiates it in a way that apparently makes Adrian think of the Muppets, but more of that pure, deep trust he used to have for adults who dressed in plain clothes and spoke in calm, smiling voices on after-school TV. It makes him think even better of Stan for marrying her - the fact that she loves him is a good reflection on his character.

“If I can see you,” Patty says, “Don definitely will.”

“Fuck,” Adrian says. “Why couldn’t I have been stuck with  _ you  _ all day?”

“Okay,” Richie says. “I know we all want to be stuck with Patty Urine, but-”

Noises echo up the hallway. Someone’s coming towards them with fast, heavy footsteps, and suddenly Adrian really can’t think about Maturin or the Muppets, he can only think about -   


“I know those footsteps,” he hears himself say. It hasn’t been that long. For the others it’s been - what, three, four days? But for Adrian it hasn’t even been one. Yesterday he’d woken up with Don in his bed and he’d laid there watching Don breathe. After a while Don had rolled over and squinted like he always did when he wasn’t quite awake.

_ Morning _ , Adrian had said.

Don had smiled. Even not quite awake, he’d always smiled at Adrian.

He’d opened his mouth and said -

The door bursts open. Don steps in, eyes scanning the room. They catch on Adrian immediately, and Adrian sobs, feeling none of it, tears or thick throat, but he sobs anyway.

“Hi,” he says.

Don stares. His lips shake. His hands, too.

“Adrian,” he says.

“Yeah,” Adrian says. “Hi, babe, that’s me - I - how are you?”

Don blinks. He looks dazed. “I,” he says, and swallows.   


He rushes forwards, and Adrian is so caught up in it that he doesn’t think to warn him. His arms come up, and so do Don’s, and then - 

Don’s hands go through him. Everything stops. Adrian is distantly aware of the others who had been in the car standing at the door, hovering in the hallway with heavy expressions. He thinks Beverly makes a noise. It sounds a lot like _ oh - oh, no _ -

Don stares. Moves his hand. It goes through Adrian’s cheek.

“Babe,” Adrian says. “We have a situation.”   


“What the hell,” Don says. He meets Adrian’s eyes. He’s crying too. “Adrian - what-”

“So I’m dead,” Adrian says, choked with it, “but it’s probably a temporary situation, so don’t worry.”

Don’s mouth moves. He shifts his hand through Adrian’s cheek, only barely. It almost looks like he’s dragging his fingers across it, except the tips of his fingers go through like Adrian’s just air. Which, Adrian guesses, he is.

“What,” Don says again. He blinks rapidly. Then he looks over his shoulder at Mike.   


“What’s going on,” he says. Wet, wounded noises come from him. “What the hell is - how is this-”

“So the clown was real,” Adrian says, and Don’s gaze snaps back to him. “The clown was real, these guys killed it. Remember all those child murders just before we were born? That was the fucking clown. Except it’s not a clown, it’s - did you guys not tell him  _ anything _ ?”

He directs it to Mike, who sighs.

“We didn’t have any proof,” he says. “And it's a big thing to say without proof. We figured it’d be better to-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Adrian says. He hovers his hand against Don’s face. “Fair. I - babe, everything’s gonna be okay. The turtle can help us this time.”

“What,” Don croaks.

“The turtle can help us,” Adrian repeats. “I just gotta-”

His head pulses. Then the pulse encompasses all of him, beyond whatever he is now, beyond the universe and into the macroverse; that white, endless space where Adrian had been pulled into when he died. 

It’s only for a second. Less than that, even. A microsecond, a flicker, like Patty seeing him. There and gone. At least, that’s what Adrian thinks of it when he remembers. When it’s happening, it lasts a long time. 

But then it ends, and Adrian snaps back, and he’s barely been gone for a flicker.

“Adrian,” Don says. He holds him the best he can, keeping his hands close. “You were - what  _ was- _ ”

“I know how to do it now,” Adrian says. He slurs it a little. Interdimensional travel does that to a person. He looks at Stan. “Hell of a trip, huh.”   


Stan blinks. “Whatever just happened to you, it never happened to me.”   


Adrian shrugs. He looks to Richie, who is standing again, hands opening and closing.

“I can do it now,” Adrian says. He looks at Don again. “Don, I gotta - I gotta do this one quick thing, okay? Then I think I’m gonna come back to life. That’s what Maturin says, anyway.”   


“Who-”

“I’ll explain everything,” Adrian says. “Or - these guys will, I don’t actually know all of it. I  _ did _ , just then, but it’s gone now. Anyway, everyone out of the room but me and Richie.”   


There’s a hesitation. Adrian jerks his head.

“Out,” he says. Then, “Stan, want me to pass anything on to Turtle Jesus?”

Stan doesn’t look particularly on board with this. But he says, “Sure,” and smiles like he means it, or at least part of him does, as he continues: “Tell him I said hi.”

Adrian nods. Gives him a thumbs up.

Don starts moving along with everyone else, but Adrian keeps him there with a gesture. Adrian grabs at him, not touching, but Don stops as if he’d held him tight.

“I love you,” Adrian says. “I love you with all of me and I love you beyond myself and - and we have time after this, okay? I’m gonna live and we’re gonna get the fuck out of Derry and we’re never coming back. It’s just a little longer, babe. Wait for me?”

Don blinks. His gaze is hazy and sharp all at once. 

Adrian thinks of that time Don cut himself in shop class and lost enough blood to go into shock. Adrian held him up when he could stand and then held him steady when he had to sit down. He’d stroked his hair as Don puked and sweated and got patched up.

Don’s breath shakes with the rest of him. Then it steadies, like Adrian is holding him in place.

“Always,” he says. “I’ll always - you  _ know  _ I’ll always-”

“I know,” Adrian says. He grins. “Hey, this won’t take long. Next time you go to sleep I’ll be right there next to you, alright?”

“Alright,” Don says. He looks like he wants to kiss Adrian, hold his hand, do  _ anything _ . Adrian can relate.

“I love you,” he says again.

“I love  _ you _ ,” Don says. “I - god,  _ Adrian _ . I thought-”

“I know,” Adrian says. “Hey, I know. I’m alright now. We have time. Later, okay?”

“Okay,” Don says. He wipes at his eyes. Tries to wipe at Adrian’s face, but his hand goes through. “Shit.”   


“I know,” Adrian says. “Later.”   


“Later,” Don says. He sniffs and turns to go. He glances at Adrian a few times before the door closes.

When Adrian turns, Richie is staring at the wall. His jaw is tight and his eyes are moving, like he’s actually interested in the fucking wallpaper, but his eyes are wet. 

“So,” Richie says.

Adrian snorts. “What, afraid you’ll catch it?”

Richie looks at him. There’s something happening in his face. His mouth flinches into a smile.

“Too late for that,” he says. “I - you’re really going to come back?”

“Yeah,” Adrian says. He steps closer. 

“Then let’s get this over with,” Richie says.

Adrian starts rubbing his hands. He rubs and rubs like he’s in boy scouts again, trying to start a fire with a stick. He only managed it once. He still remembers the spark; Don’s whoop of shock and joy. Don had wanted to do boy scouts and Adrian had followed him into it, because of course he did.

“Uh,” Richie says. “What’s with the-”

Adrian rubs harder.   


“Static electricity,” he says. “Remember how fun that was as a kid? Rubbing your socks against the carpet and go around shocking everyone.”   


“I remember,” Richie says slowly. He watches Adrian as he comes closer, and jumps when his hands crackle.

Adrian laughs again. He holds out his hands, puts each fingertip against Richie’s head, fanning them out like a strange halo.

They wait.

Richie starts to say, “I don’t feel any-”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


They don’t go to the macroverse. They don’t go anywhere, really.

They just get shown something. A movie played out in their heads, where they can get up and walk around in it.

When they come to, they’re standing in Richie’s apartment. Adrian knows this because he knows a lot right now, tendrils of knowledge seeping in from before, and also because Richie says, “Okay, this is my LA apartment.”

“Your  _ LA  _ apartment,” Adrian says, automatic. “You have more than one apartment? You’re such a rich asshole.”

“I mean,” Richie says. “Yeah?”

“Where are your other apartments, asshole?”

“Chicago,” Richie says. “And, uh - hey, aren’t we supposed to be doing something? I don’t feel like I’m getting shown-”

“I can’t believe you have more than two apartments,” Adrian says.

At that, Old Richie walks in. He’s not that old, maybe ten years older, but there’s a lot of grey and… skin sagging. On the face, mostly. He’s in a ratty shirt and sweatpants and he’s drinking a beer even though it seems to be pretty early in the morning, if the light is anything to go by.

“Ohhhkay,” Richie says. “So this is - what, ghost of futures yet to come? ‘Cause I’m  _ very  _ underwhelmed-”

The phone rings. Old Richie sighs and picks it up from the couch. He smiles a little, face relaxing, almost looking good for a moment. Then he answers the phone.

“Hey, Eds,” he says.

Next to Adrian, Richie folds his arms. Adrian doesn’t pay much attention. He knows how this goes. He knows a lot of things right now, even if they are fuzzy and out of reach and will go away soon. 

“Ha, yeah,” Old Richie says. He starts slow-walking around the apartment. He puts down his beer on the coffee table. “Yeah, it’ll be really good to see you too, man. It’s been a minute.”

Whatever Eddie says on the other end, it makes Old Richie’s smile fade. He rubs at his forehead.

“Uh, yeah,” he says. “I guess. I mean, not - it’s not that bad. You don’t have to - yeah. Yeah, I know. So-”

He makes some agreeing noises for a while. He picks up his beer again and keeps drinking during the call.

“Yeah, well, I’m worried about  _ you _ ,” Old Richie says eventually. “So that - goes both ways. How about you get your shit together before coming after me, huh?”

“Um,” Richie says. “I know all of this already? Like - none of this future is a surprise. Why-”

And then they’re not in Richie’s LA apartment anymore. They’re in a big, empty, grey bedroom and everything’s very clean and Eddie is sitting on the bed. The New York skyline is outside the window. Eddie’s older too and looks very tired and he’s in the middle of saying something to Richie.

“-want us to be okay,” says Old Eddie. “I hate all of them staring at us in - in  _ pity  _ when we go and see them. We’re not doing great but we’re not as bad as we used to be, right?”

He nods at whatever Richie says. He rubs his hand down his face.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah.”   


Beside Adrian, Richie has stopped folding his arms. Instead they hang limply at his sides. He’s watching Eddie with an aching intensity.

“Oh,” he says quietly.

“Yeah,” Old Eddie says again, unaware. “So we’re - doing the best we can. I know that, but I just think that  _ you  _ \- no, it’s different with me! I’m-”

He stops, looks around the room. Something passes over his face. He twists at his finger, the bare one that used to have the wedding ring.

“I just don’t want to,” he says. “And that’s not - I didn’t call you to talk about that, anyway. I just wanted to catch up.”

Richie walks closer. He keeps glancing at Eddie’s face, like he’s worried Eddie’s going to catch him out on it.

“We’re not here,” Adrian tells him. “Not really. You can do or say whatever you want.”   


Richie nods, not looking back at him. He steps closer until his legs press into the edge of Eddie’s bed, and Eddie is within touching distance.

Eddie keeps talking on the phone. His posture is rigid. His clothes look much like the ones he was wearing back in Derry, and there are two photos on the walls - one of the Losers as kids and one of them as adults, beaming out - but not a lot else. Nothing personal in the room that suggests he has much of a life.

There are a lot of silences in the phone call. Eventually Eddie says, “Okay - yeah. Yeah, I’ll - we’ll catch up soon? Yeah, dickhead, you said that last time and here I am having to call first. Again.”   


Richie snorts. He smiles, but only for a second. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “I - see you, man. I-”

He hesitates. Then he says, “Bye,” and hangs up.

He holds his phone in his lap. The screen is a default picture of a mountain. 

Then Eddie goes into his pictures. There aren’t many, so it doesn’t take long to scroll. He brings up a picture and stares at it.

Adrian isn’t close enough to see, but he knows what it is. 

Richie’s breath hitches.

Adrian snorts.

The picture is of him - Richie, older but not much. He obviously doesn’t know the photo is being taken; he’s in mid-laugh. It’s hard to tell what’s going on in the photo. It’s been zoomed in, so it’s just Richie’s face and some of his shoulders. 

Eddie draws his thumb down the edge of the phone, around a corner. He rubs slowly, longingly. His eyes are very soft and very sad.

He stares for a while. So does Richie. At one point he holds up a hand like he’s about to touch Eddie, but then jams the hand in his pocket and rocks back on his heels.

Adrian watches it all with a faint sense of incredulity and - yeah, okay, some sadness. He has first hand experience with not being able to comfort the man you love. Not being able to touch him.

Richie swallows loudly. He turns back to Adrian.

“This is the message,” he says.

Adrian nods.

“Huh,” Richie says. He moves his hands in his jacket pockets so the jacket comes out like wings, then lets them fall back. “I thought it’d just be about me.”   


“Well, that’s cause you’re a self-centered fuck,” Adrian says.

Richie laughs. Adrian laughs with him. It’s relief, this laughter. Full, hard-won relief.

Richie glances back at Eddie. Then he closes his eyes, shakes his head as if shaking off a bad thought.

“If I apologize,” he says, “are you gonna tell me to fuck off again?”

“Probably,” Adrian says. He smiles. “Try it later. After I’ve been alive for a while. I’ll probably apologize too, by then. For all the -”

He waves a hand vaguely.   


“Got it,” Richie says. He comes to stand in front of him. “So - message received. One of us has gotta do the brave thing. Honestly, I’m surprised that Eddie-”

“He does, mostly,” Adrian says. “Other worlds,” he clarifies when Richie blinks. “Just - not in some of them. That fear’s hard to shake out, you know? It’s a lot easier to just - keep going how it’s always been.”

Richie nods. He opens his mouth, then shuts it.

“Okay,” he says. “How do we get out of here? Static electricity again, or-”

“Nope,” Adrian says.

Richie starts to say, “So how do we-”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


They are there, and then they’re in an endless space. 

There’s a turtle. He has big impossible eyes in his big impossible body and his mouth doesn’t move but he smiles anyway, and Adrian and Richie stare up at him. They are overwhelmed with something mortals don’t understand, something beyond the deadlights. Something kind. 

Maturin speaks. He says one word, and in it is a love bigger than the universe.

Then he says, TELL STAN I SAID HI BACK.

There’s a 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


throb like the big bang. It reverberates through them both, and for a moment they’re everything that has ever existed, and then it passes and they forget what it’s like to be everything and they’re Adrian and Richie again, standing together in the hotel room.

The first thing Adrian does, after his mind and body is given back to him, is slap Richie in the face.

“Ow,” Richie says. It’s dazed because he’s also reeling with things he can’t remember now, but float just out of reach, causing blind spots. 

Then he says, “Oh, shit,” as the implications of the slap arrive.

Adrian whoops. “I have a body again!”

“You have a body again,” Richie agrees. Then: “Ow,” when Adrian slaps him on the other cheek.

“Just checking,” Adrian says. He pats himself down, feels the pressure and sensation - heartbeat, check. Bones and skin - everything in place, as far as he can tell. He sucks in a breath and his lungs inflate. He’s missed having lungs. He’s going to do a lot of breathing exercises.   


Richie rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Sure. You want to go see your boyfriend or you want to stay here slapping me?”

Adrian grins. He kisses Richie's cheeks over the places he’s slapped, then rushes out as Richie says, “Whoa, okay then.” 

Don is standing outside the room with the others. His eyes fill when he sees Adrian again.

Mike says, “Did-”

Adrian answers the unfinished question by throwing himself into Don’s arms and kissing him with everything he’s got. As he kisses Don, he thinks of that love bigger than the universe, of it filling him up.

Around him the Losers say happy things and someone claps, but Adrian doesn’t pay attention. Don is warm and steady against him and he’s squeezing Adrian hard enough to hurt, which is amazing. Adrian has missed hurting, at least this kind of hurt: the good kind that doesn’t do damage and comes from people you love, the kind you give yourself to over and over again, someone so overjoyed to see you that they hold you tight, like they never want to let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /rubs hands in delighted anticipation


	7. Chapter 7

Richie is quiet, after. He doesn’t tell them what the message was.

Eddie watches him. 

“Turtle stuff,” Richie says when Eddie gets up the guts to ask what’s on his mind, maybe an hour later. They’re eating dinner by then, sitting around the hotel room with takeout. Indian food, not Chinese. Eddie doesn’t think any of them are going to eat Chinese food anytime soon.

“Right,” Eddie says. He frowns, trying to remember his own turtle stuff. When he came back from the dead, he couldn’t remember any of it, but he’d known it had happened. It was frustrating.

He told Richie this, and Richie laughed.

“I know, right,” Richie says. “I definitely got fed the secrets of the universe, and I know that I knew them, but now they’re just - gone. Except for the Stan thing.”

He’d told Stan maybe a minute after coming out of - wherever they’d been. _Maturin told me to say hi back_ . Stan had blinked, and then laughed, and then cried a little and hugged Patty and then everybody else.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He looks around the hotel room - Adrian and Don are sitting on the bed, tangled up in each other, eating rice. The others are sitting around the room, mostly on the floor, like Richie and Eddie, who are sitting against the door. Richie had sat down next to him after the food arrived, closer than Eddie had expected. Their knees touch. Elbows, too.

 _I forgot you,_ Eddie thinks. _How could I forget? When I forgot you I forgot bits of me. I spent most of my life walking around without important pieces of me, and now I’m restored -_

“Deep thoughts with Eddie Kasprak,” Richie says. It’s almost a question.

“Uh,” Eddie says.

Richie waves his plastic fork at him. “You just have that face on.”

 _I am restored,_ Eddie thinks. His cheek aches with the cut that wasn’t healed along with his gaping torso wound. It wasn’t healed properly, anyway. Now it just looks and feels weeks old rather than hours. There’s still more healing to do. Someday the scar will lose its pink.

“Hard not to have deep thoughts, I guess,” Eddie says. “With - everything that’s happened.”

Richie hums. He looks up at Adrian and Don, who have their legs entwined. Adrian is laughing at something Don said, his face lighting up with it. He’s been restored, too. No bruises, no nothing. Completely and utterly whole.

They both turn when the others burst into laughter.

“What’d we miss,” Richie says.

Bev is wiping away tears. She’s leaning against Patty Uris.

“You’re missing out,” she says. “Patty’s telling this amazing story about Stan’s college years-”

“We really could’ve left him out of this,” Stan says as Richie instantly scoots closer. He abandons his Indian food back with Eddie, who tries not to be annoyed by the lack of contact and fails.

“Nope, Trashmouth’s back in your life,” Richie says. “That means I have to get all the ammunition out of the years I missed. Patty, you’re my best friend now.”

Patty laughs. She hasn’t let go of her husband’s hand since she sat down, or really for the whole time they’ve been in Derry, which is fair. She saw him dead on her bathroom floor less than four days ago.

“I don’t know how I feel about that,” she says. “Stan told me about you on the way here.”

Richie tips back his head in his next laugh. His teeth flash. He’s always had a big mouth, metaphorically or otherwise. 

Eddie’s chest clenches.

Not long after that, Don and Adrian climb off the bed. 

“We’re gonna head out,” Don says. He’d mostly stuck around to get things explained, and Adrian had joined in - there had been a lot of little stuff he hadn’t been told yet, even if he rushed them through explanations and cut people off if it wasn’t interesting. He listened to Mike a lot though, and sat through Mike’s whole explanation on the research he’d compiled about Derry over the years.

“It’s so weird you have this secret life, Mr. Hanlon,” he’d said by the end of it.

“Teachers always do,” Mike says. “I mean. I’m a librarian, but - like, how you don't think teachers-? You get it.”

He stands now and hugs Adrian. He claps him on the back, grinning hard.

“I’m so glad you came back,” he says. He wipes at his face. He’d been crying off and on since he made some calls in the hall and found out the kids had been resurrected, too. Only the two from the last couple days, but still. Better than no kids coming back to life.

“You and me both,” Adrian says. He’s grinning too. “Could’ve been an easier time, but hey! Can’t argue with the result. Fully solid!”

He thumps his own chest. Don stares at him like he’s been staring the whole time, like he can’t believe his luck and quietly thinks that Adrian will vanish if Don doesn’t watch him. It’s the same way Patty’s been looking at Stan. It’s the same way, Eddie thinks, that Richie’s looked at him once or twice since he came back. He always looks away when he notices Eddie looking, but -

“Well, don’t be a stranger,” Mike says. 

Adrian makes a face. “It’s not like we’ll see each other around town. You’re-”

“ _Oh_ , yeah. As soon as these guys get out of here, I’m following.”

“Good,” Adrian says. “We’re probably gonna beat you to it, then. Might leave tomorrow morning. If we didn’t need to sleep, we’d leave right now.”

He yawns. Doesn’t cover his mouth. “Shit, dying is tiring. Y’know?”

He directs it to Stan and Eddie, who look at each other.

Eddie shrugs and nods. Stan squeezes Patty’s hand.

“Aaaanyway,” Adrian says. He claps Mike on the shoulder. “We’ll call. Trade travel tips. See you, Losers.”

“See you,” the Losers echo back. Eddie stands and moves away from the door, goes to sit next to Richie, who doesn’t seem to be expecting anything and looks surprised when Adrian turns to him.

“Get Mike to text me your number,” he says.

Richie nods. “You got it. Uh, don’t die.”

Adrian clicks his tongue. “Me? Never.”

Then he leaves. He doesn’t look back. Don doesn’t either, too stuck on Adrian. The door closes behind them.

Eddie settles. There’s nothing to lean against now, except for Richie. He puts his weight onto him, shoulder to shoulder. When Richie looks over at him, Eddie meets his eyes. Neither of them look away.

“How’re you doing,” Ben says. 

Mike keeps wiping his face. He laughs. “I just - I can’t believe we’re all - okay! Not - not everyone, of course, there’s still Georgie and everyone else who-”

“H-hey,” Bill says. He touches Mike’s shoulder as he comes to sit back on the floor again. “N-none of that, M-Mikey.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He reaches over, stretching hard to do it, and touches Mike’s arm. “We’re all here, man.”

Mike cries some more, but not for long. He smiles throughout it, except when he doesn’t. Eddie tries to imagine it, 27 years in this place, waiting for this moment.

“Since we’re doing Emotions right now,” Richie says. He turns to Stan. “I, uh. Am gay.”

Stan nods. “Yeah, I know.”

Richie blows out a breath. “You perceptive little shit. I _knew_ you knew.”

Stan glances around at the others. “Did you already tell-?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. He shifts on the spot and Eddie feels him shift. Their sides are still pressed together, knees overlapping. “We thought - anyway, it was… dramatic.”

Stan nods at the door where Adrian has just left. 

“Was it because of-?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “Then we got into a screaming match.”

Stan nods as if this fits. He reaches past Patty and Bev to grasp Richie’s knee.

“I’m proud of you, Rich.”

Richie mumbles something. Eddie’s pretty sure it’s literally _mumble, mumble._

“Hey, no, wait,” Eddie says. “What about the other thing?”

Richie looks at him. “Other thing?”

“That you were going to try-”

“Right,” Richie says. Something passes over his face, but it’s very fast and Eddie thinks he might’ve imagined it. “Yeah, that. Turns out we didn’t need to!”

“But what was it?”

Richie looks at him some more. He’s calm, but there’s something under it. His jaw shifts from side to side. 

Eddie is suddenly very aware of everyone watching them. When he checks, everyone is expectant and/or curious, except for Stan, whose face is so blank and innocent that it can only mean he’s waiting for something hilarious. Which isn’t comforting.

Richie says, “I’ll tell you later, Eds.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and Richie breaks out into a grin.

“What! I _will_ tell you, just not-”

“Yeah, okay, that’s a cop-out,” Eddie says. “You could tell us in a year and it’d still be _later_ . You could tell us on your deathbed and it’d still technically be _later_ . Hey Richie, what was the message Maturin gave to Adrian to give to you? Other than saying hi to Stan,” he adds when Richie opens his mouth. “Don’t worry, I’ll tell you guys _later_.”

Richie keeps looking at him. It’s unnerving, but not in a bad way. 

“Could tell you now, if you want,” he says eventually. “But we’ll have to go somewhere that isn’t here.”

Eddie’s pulse jumps.

“Uh,” he says. “O...kay? Just me?”

“Just you.”

Eddie looks at the others. Their expressions have changed now, looking a little more knowing, or at least suspecting, though most of them are politely trying to hide it.

“Whatever, weirdo,” Eddie says, and pushes himself to his feet. He reaches down to help Richie up, and Richie takes his hand and then waits.

Eddie sighs. “Don’t make me pull, I’m not going to-”

“I’m so old, Eds,” Richie says. “I need help-”

“You’re such a fucking _baby_ ,” Eddie says, and yanks. Richie is pulled up a bit, but not much. He’s gotten even bigger and lankier than he was as a teen. Eddie tries not to think about that, instead he yanks some more at Richie, who is grinning at the effort.

“Put your back into it,” Richie tells him.

Eddie drops him. Richie hits the floor with a thunk and a laugh. Eddie leaves him there and heads to the door, more annoyed and more happy than he has been in a very long time.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“So what was the message,” Eddie says when Richie follows him out into the hall.

Richie closes the door behind him. He comes to stand close to Eddie, closer than he expects, and Eddie swallows and doesn’t step back.

“Or - the thing you were gonna try,” Eddie continues. “Whichever, you haven’t told us either of-”

“They’re kinda connected,” Richie says.

Eddie nods. Desperately tries to squash the hope in his chest, because that’s impossibly self-centered. 

“The message was that I should stop being an idiot,” Richie says.

“So it was wasted,” Eddie says, knee-jerk.

Richie snorts. Eddie had tried to make him laugh as he’d been dying down in the sewers, but Richie hadn’t even cracked a smile at Eddie telling him he’d fucked his mom. This is better.

“Seriously,” Eddie says. “What was it?”

Richie shifts his jaw again. Slower this time, like he’s grinding his teeth.

“It wasn’t all about me,” he says, and now he drops his gaze. Looks at the wall behind Eddie’s head. “Actually it was kind of about you.”

“Me,” Eddie says, heart pounding in his ears. “Then why didn’t I get the message?”

“‘Cause it was also about me,” Richie says. “And - I don’t know, maybe Maturin thought I needed Adrian to hang me out to dry for a day.”

He scuffs his feet.

“Quit it,” Eddie says. “It’s bad for the shoes. And the carpet.”

“Right,” Richie says. He meets Eddie’s eyes again. Smiles soft, the kind of soft he usually didn’t let people see, the kind that Eddie tried to coax out of him in a hundred stupid ways as a kid. 

“I forgot you had a thing about scuffing,” Richie continues.

Eddie shrugs. It’s his turn to not meet his gaze. He looks at Richie’s shoulder, which turns out to be a bad idea, because Eddie _likes_ Richie’s shoulders. He looks back into his face.

“Really,” he says. “What was it?”

“I gotta stop living like this,” Richie says. He waves vaguely at himself. “You know?”

“Sure,” Eddie says, mostly to get him to continue.

Richie doesn’t, at first. He looks at Eddie like he’s examining him, or maybe figuring him out.

“Do you,” Richie says.

“What?”

Richie opens his mouth. Closes it. Says, “What are you gonna do, Eds? After all this?”

“I’m,” Eddie says. The roof of his mouth burns with the urge to pry every answer that Richie isn’t saying. Also Indian food. “Quit avoiding the question, man.”

Richie just keeps looking.

Eddie sighs. “I need to go to talk to Myra. Serve the divorce papers properly. Then - I don’t know. Live my own life?”

Richie nods. Pockets his hands. “You should come to LA.”

“Yeah?” Eddie feels like he’s on the precipice. Of what, he doesn’t know. But he suspects, and god, he hopes. He’s also sweating like a pig.

“You think you can put up with me,” he says, just as knee-jerk as telling Richie he’s an idiot, as knee-jerk as looking away when Richie catches him staring.

He doesn’t look away now. It takes most of his effort to keep his eyes on Richie’s as Richie reaches up, puts a hand on Eddie’s face. He tucks his fingers around his cheek, just near the bandage, curling around his chin. He has big, long fingers. Big shoulders. Big mouth.

“Eds,” he says, with every bit of terrifying vulnerability that Eddie could never get out of him when they were kids.

Eddie feels his smile fade. It drops into the background. Eddie doesn’t know what his face looks like now, he isn’t very aware of most of his body at the moment. All of his sensation zeroes into Richie’s warm hand on his face. Richie always ran hot. They used him as a heater in the cold months, crowding up to him, putting their hands on his face, tucking under his arms. Eddie would do this all the time in winter. He’d bitch at Richie the whole time, and Richie would bitch back, but he never pushed Eddie off. 

“Oh,” he hears himself say. Doubt and hope flare in equal parts. “I - Rich-”

“I think I know something,” Richie says. “But if - hey, I don’t wanna be wrong, but if I am, that’s fine. I don’t think I’m wrong, though.”

Eddie wets his lips. Richie tracks the movement of his tongue, and it makes Eddie’s knees go fucking weak.

“You’re not wrong,” Eddie says. His voice is shot. When did that happen?

He clears his throat. “I - is this what you saw in the message? Us?”

“Nah,” Richie says. His thumb strokes a small back-and-forth line over Eddie’s cheek. “I saw what happened if we weren’t us.”

Eddie thinks. “How was it?”

“Pretty pathetic,” Richie says, all of him incredibly fond, all of it directed at Eddie. “We were both sad old men.”

“Yeah?” Eddie leans into the hand on his face. He should reciprocate, but he can’t imagine how to start. He brings his hands up to Richie’s hips, folds his fingers around them.

“What about when we’re - us?”

“I don’t know,” Richie says. “I didn’t see it. I - we could be happy. Right?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, embarrassingly lightheaded. “I think so. I can’t believe Adrian had to come back as a ghost and tell us that.”

“Wasn’t him,” Richie says. “It was Turtle Jesus.”

“Quit calling him that,” Eddie says, and then sighs. “I can’t believe Turtle Jesus had to send a message for us to wise the fuck up.”

Richie hums in agreement. It sounds distracted. He’s still rubbing Eddie’s cheek, a warm, long line.

“I don’t know,” he says. “We’re pretty stupid.”

Eddie nods, mostly as something to do. Richie’s gaze keeps ticking hungrily over his face.

“Rich,” Eddie says. “Can you just-”

“What,” Richie says, still distracted. Then, “Oh.”

He leans in. Eddie meets him halfway, stretching up to press their mouths together. Richie’s mouth runs even hotter than the rest of him. Eddie thinks of frostbite, of being saved from it, of thrusting your freezing hands into hot water and watching all the skin go angry pink. It means you’re safe, nothing needs to be cut off, you just need warmth and rest and time to heal.

They kiss and the heat of Richie’s mouth sinks through Eddie’s skin, down his throat, warming him from the inside out until his skin buzzes with it. When Richie puts his other hand on Eddie’s face, framing it from both sides, Eddie thinks of a lifetime of cold being flushed out. He’d forgotten what warmth felt like and here it is - finally.


	8. Chapter 8

Ten months later, Richie steeples his fingers and stares at his laptop.

The cursor blinks back at him. He’s just started re-writing a new section of his next show and the Word document is goddamn taunting him. He has the draft in one document, which takes up half the screen, and the re-write up in the other half, and the rewrite is turning out just as messy and colorless as the first draft.

Richie debates going out to the lounge to distract Eddie, who got home half an hour ago. Or, y’know. He could blow him or something. 

“Nope,” he says aloud. He gives himself a light slap. “Focus.”

He stares at the screen some more. Types a sentence. Deletes it.

Then he sighs and gets out his phone.

“I’m funny, right,” he says when the call gets picked up.

“Not even a little,” Adrian says. “Tragically unfunny. People are laughing _at_ you, that’s the whole appeal of Trashmouth. Oh no, has no one told you that?”

Richie snorts. Leans back in his office chair. It’s a fancy one, ergonomic or whatever. Eddie made him get in a few months back when Richie complained of back pain one too many times, and so far, it’s been one of the many times Eddie has been proven right. Richie doesn’t have to lie in a weird way for a few minutes waiting for his back to un-tense whenever he lies down anymore. It’s great.

“See, this is what I pay you for,” Richie says. “No one cuts me to the quick like you do, man.”

“Oh, shit, I forgot about the money,” Adrian says. He clears his throat. “It’s _soooo_ good, yessir, the best comedy I’ve ever heard. Read drafts of. Whatever. The best, Richard, lemme suck your dick over how good it is-”

“That job post’s taken,” Richie says. He pauses. “Don’t tell Eddie I said that.”

“Already texting him,” Adrian says, his voice far away. Then he laughs and he’s normal-sounding again. “Rewrite kicking your ass, huh?”

“Brutally,” Richie says. 

“Want me to read it and-”

“Nah,” Richie says. “That’d mean I’d have to have something to send you.”

“That’s the problem?” Adrian makes a derisive noise. He’s good at those. “That’s easy! Just write.”

“Wow,” Richie says. “Thanks, man, that really helps. Just write! I can’t believe I never-”

“And then you send it to me,” Adrian continues over him, “and I tell you what bits are shit, and you make it better and send it to me again, and the cycle keeps going until it isn’t shit anymore! Adrian Mellon: shit polisher. Polishes all your shit.”

“I’ll get you business cards,” Richie says. 

He cranes his head towards the window. The sun’s going down, it’ll be dinnertime soon. Tuesday is curry night, which means that Richie and Eddie will bicker in the kitchen for 45 minutes over what they’re doing wrong, and also somehow manage to get a curry together. Richie can’t wait.

He must have gone silent for a while, because when Adrian speaks next, it’s to say, “Uhhh, do you actually need emotional support right now? I just assumed not. ‘Cause you called me, not Ben or whatever.”

“Nah,” Richie says. “I know what I’m getting into when I call you.”

“Good,” Adrian says. “But - so’s the show.”

“Oh, the show’s good?”

“Well, not right _now_ . But yeah, it’ll be good. It’s gonna be really good. And _really_ gay.” 

“Ah yes,” Richie says. “The most important part.”

“The _most_ important part,” Adrian agrees. “Hey, have you gotten Eddie to sign off on that story about the first time he-”

Richie laughs. Starts pushing himself around the room in his ergonomic office chair.

“Nope, niet and nada,” he says. “And quit trying to goad him into it, he’s developing a Pavlovian response to seeing you’ve texted him, and it’s not a nice response.”

“Fuck yeah, let’s annoy him into it,” Adrian says. 

There’s a muffled noise like a packet opening.

Richie asks, “Where are you, what’s going on in Adrian and Don’s magical paradise trip -”

“We’re at a maaagical gas station,” Adrian says. “In maaagical Texas.”

“Huh. Gross.”

“I know,” Adrian says. There’s more muffled crinkling, then Adrian starts eating. “We’re just passing through. Don’s inside getting more provisions. What are things like in Richie’s Rich, Rich, Mega Rich land? Dusting gold on top of your caviar?”

“Always,” Richie says. “Always the gold-dusted caviar.”

There’s a bang from the kitchen and some familiar, fond swearing.

“Hey,” Richie says. “I think I’m gonna go, Eddie’s making noises in the kitchen.”

“Hot,” Adrian says. “Send me the rewrite when you’re done. Can’t wait to rip it to shreds.”

“As always, I’m touched by your love and support,” Richie says. “See you.”

“Byeeeee,” Adrian says. He’s still drawing it out when Richie hangs up.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


When Richie comes into the kitchen, Eddie is getting ingredients out from the cupboard - beans, coconut milk, spices. 

“What’d you drop,” Richie says, walking up behind Eddie and circling his arms around his front. He rests his chin on the top of Eddie’s head and only has to stretch a little. He’s betting on the big pot, which they only use for curry nights. It’s sitting next to the chickpeas.

“Nothing,” Eddie says. He puts a hand on Richie’s arm and leans into him. 

“Yeah? ‘Cause I heard you swearing and it sounded like you dropped the curry pot on your foot.”

Eddie turns around in his arms so they’re facing each other. His forehead creases are creasing adorably. 

“Well, you heard wrong,” he says.

Richie hums. He can’t exactly lean his head on Eddie’s right now, unless he wants Eddie to start pushing at him, so he contents himself with watching his face. God, it’s a good face. 

“Pretty sure I heard you drop the pot on your foot,” Richie says.

“Nope,” Eddie says. “That was your brain making stuff up out of boredom. Managed to do one single line of your rewrite, Rich?”

“I did,” Richie says. He beams. “And then I deleted it.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. It’s that sweet smile, the one he doesn’t try to hide, the one that happens when he’s swept up in embarrassing mushy feelings. Richie kind of wants to cry every time he gets to see it.

“How was the rest of your day,” Richie says, instead of crying.

“It was fine,” Eddie says. He leans up, presses their foreheads together. “Better now I’m here. How was yours, other than writing and deleting a sentence?”

“It was good,” Richie says. “Watched some Youtube. Talked to Bev in the morning. Just finished talking to Adrian.”

“Yeah?” Eddie skims his hands up Richie’s arms, stopping just under his shoulders. He squeezes slightly, because Eddie’s a big fan of Richie’s arms, no matter how much he tries to deny it. 

“How are he and Don doing? Where are they?”

“Texas. I know,” Richie says when Eddie makes a face. “They agree. So, what’re we making tonight, Chef Kasbrak?”

Eddie pulls back, nods at the counter. “Can’t Be Bothered Curry.”

“Got it,” Richie says. This means they chuck in whatever they can find, plus store-brought curry powder and coconut milk. Eddie’s already got the rice cooker going. It’s not bubbling yet, but soon it will be.

Richie stands there in the kitchen, Eddie in his arms, dinner and everything else ahead of them, and takes a moment to bask in it. The light glows pink in the kitchen, clashing with the lights above the stove, which are golden. It’s very atmospheric. If this were a rom-com, nothing would have to get edited. 

Eddie’s still got that face, the gentle, bright expression that means he’s stupid in love and everything is very soft in the mind of Eddie Kasprak. Which is good, because Richie lines up with this perfectly.

Sometimes it happens like this, both of them hit by it at the same time. Other times Richie will stare as Eddie does his usual stuff and when he gets called on it, Eddie will either tease him mercilessly or kiss him. Mostly both. Other times, Eddie will get a look on his face while Richie is making cereal or talking about something dumb, and Richie will find himself with a sudden armful of boyfriend. After Eddie watches a bit, that is. There’s always a few seconds of that, at least.

Richie lets himself be watched. It’s only fair. He’s watching right back.

“What’s up,” Richie asks. It’s so fond he would’ve joke-gagged at himself not long ago.

“Kiss me,” Eddie says.

“Ugh,” Richie says. “If I must.”

Eddie swears at him, but there’s nothing mean behind it. When Richie ducks his head into the kiss, he hears himself sigh.

It’s quiet, it’s content, and it’s the most relieved sound either of them have ever heard.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Adrian is pocketing his phone when Don climbs back into the driver’s seat.

“Richie called,” Adrian says as Don hands him chip packets and chocolate. He chucks it in the backseat.

Don starts eating an apple. He keeps getting fruit when they stop at gas stations. 

_We can’t live on junk food, we’re closer to 30 than 20_ , he keeps telling Adrian, who denies this but will always relent after a day or two of junk. No matter what Adrian claims, he can only go so far with chocolate as fuel.

“How is he,” Don asks. He turns the car on.

“The same,” Adrian says as they pull out of the gas station. 

“Still struggling with the-?”

“He’ll get it,” Adrian says. He’s excited for the show, honestly. The parts of the show that Richie’s finished so far - _finished_ as in re-written eight hundred times until they were drum-tight - are really fucking good. Laugh out loud when you read them good, and by now Adrian knows that Richie can really tell a goddamn joke. If the rule is _it’s not what you say but how you say it,_ the show’s going to kick everyone’s ass, with Richie at the top of his game, delivering this kind of material. 

It’s also going to make some homophobes - i.e. a lot of Richie’s old fanbase - angry and disgusted. But who gives a fuck about them?

“Are we sleeping in the car or a motel,” Adrian asks as they eat up the road.

Don makes a considering noise. “We could swing another motel.”

“Yeah?” Adrian puts a hand on Don’s knee, sliding upwards. When Don glances over, Adrian winks.

Don snorts. “We both know we’d do that in the car, babe.”

“Easier in a motel,” Adrian says mildly. He keeps his hand on Don’s leg, but slides back down to the knee. Stokes a little to feel the familiar knob of Don’s knee.

With his free hand, he gets out his phone. He forgets, sometimes, to keep in touch with people. Now that one person’s hit him up, he might as well check in with a few others.

He sends a text to Mr. Hanlon, who keeps asking them to call him Mike. Don does, but Adrian hasn’t and never will. It’s hilarious and Mr. Hanlon knows it. He asks how Mike’s own road trip is going - they’d overlapped a few months ago, and will probably do so again in a couple months’ time. 

He sends another text in the group chat aptly called RESURRECTION BUDDIES, which means Eddie and Stan and Adrian. He sends _the rituals are intricate,_ which is a favorite of Stan and Adrian, from Richie’s new show. It had been in the first draft and is still there in version 3-point-whatever the hell they’re up to now. Within a minute, Stan replies with a thumbs-up emoji. Eddie doesn’t reply yet, and Adrian thinks briefly about him messing around in that tiny LA kitchen he’s seen in the background on FaceTime.

“What kind of kitchen are we gonna have,” Adrian asks Don.

Don glances over. He always does when Adrian’s talking, even though he’s pretty strict on road safety. Adrian asked him about it once and Don had said _I want you to know I’m listening._

“Whatever we want, I guess,” Don says.

Ahead of them, the road stretches. Adrian has stared at it a long time since they set out on the road - the horizon, never getting closer, always in the distance. The promise of more, always more, going on and on and never stopping.

“Why,” Don continues. “What do you want, babe?”

Adrian settles back against the car seat. His hand stays on Don’s knee and after a moment, Don reaches down with one hand to cover it.

Adrian smiles. He closes his hand around Don’s and listens to the steady thrum of his own heart.

“I’ll get back to you on that,” he says, and leans back to think about a kitchen somewhere along the coast, warm and small and waiting for them to step into it.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Come hit me up on my [tumblr](https://goingforwards.tumblr.com/)!


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